Spring 2023 Colloquium Series

Understanding Housing Inequality in Canada

Guest speaker: Dr. Yushu Zhu
Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Public Policy, Simon Fraser University

TUESDAY, March 14, 2023, 1:00 - 2:30 PM

JOIN US FOR A FREE IN-PERSON (Zoom option) PUBLIC LECTURE 

SFU, BURNABY CAMPUS, ACADEMIC QUADRANGLE, ELLEN GEE ROOM, 5067

The neoliberalization of housing policy and housing financialization in Canada over the past four decades have brought unequal impacts on housing outcomes for Canadians. How is housing inequality manifested in the neoliberal era compared with the pre-neoliberal era? Who is bearing the brunt of housing neoliberalization? In this talk, Yushu draws on eight waves of census data to address these questions and uncover the trajectory and changing mechanism of housing stratification in selected Canadian census metropolitan areas, over a period when Canada transitioned from a welfare housing regime to a neoliberal regime.

Bio:
Yushu Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy at SFU. Trained as an urban geographer, Yushu critically engages multidisciplinary perspectives to examine housing and community issues through the lens of housing inequality, urban development and redevelopment, and civic engagement. Her research seeks to understand the institutional and structural forces driving residential stratifications, as well as the roles of housing in shaping resident behaviours and wellbeing. She is a recipient of multiple SSHRC grants and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Fellowship. In a current Partnership Grant project, titled Community Housing Canada, she works with a group of housing researchers to examine the policies, models and tenant experiences in the community housing sector, with special attention to vulnerable populations.

Register on Eventbrite link to receive a Zoom link prior to the event.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send an email to sacomm@sfu.ca

Dr. Andrea Hoff
Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanites, Simon Fraser University

TUESDAY, February 14, 2023 

As a 2022/2023 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at SFU, Andy Hoff (she/her) embarked on the project titled Drawing to Inclusion, a journey in collaboration with the self-identified community of disabled and neurodivergent students, scholars, and staff at SFU. The premise of the project began as a reflection on Andy’s own experiences in academia as a neurodivergent and invisibly disabled artist and scholar. A desire to share stories as a community and to amplify our presence in academia by means of translating our stories back onto the university through the video mapping of a collective animation projected onto the architecture of the Burnaby campus. Interesting as a meta-narrative, more challenging in reality. What transpired in the first half of the fellowship led to an understanding of how complex this undertaking was; how entering a community requires time and humility. Questions of authorship, storytelling, and an understanding of the multiple perspectives at the foundations of community reoriented the work. Refocusing on the question: how do we create a culture of wellness? the project has evolved into something different than it was at the start, something more vulnerable, and hopeful, and open. In this talk, Andy will share the journey of the project and discuss the flux of art and artist in the process of creating Drawing to Inclusion.

Bio
Andrea/ Andy Hoff (she/her) is an interdisciplinary media artist and writer. Her work explores methods of social and environmental interaction focused on inclusion, other-than-human centring, and speculative worldbuilding. Through investigations in form, surfaces, and materiality her works merge the perception of light, colour, and narrative in multiple media. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate in Language & Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia where she co-creates comics about the future with young people as a way to access agency in the Climate Crisis. Her art and writing have appeared in Broken Pencil, The Tyee, Room Magazine, and Display Canadian Design as well as in exhibitions in Canada, Australia, Germany, and Iceland. Her films and animations have been screened at the Berlinale Talent Campus, FIFA World Cup, Winnipeg Short Film Festival, NYU Film Festival, Quickdraw Animation, and the international collaboration One Day on Earth. She is currently working on a graphic memoir situated in the intersections of neurodiversity, motherhood, and academia and on an interactive animation project exploring ocean ecologies and cold-water swimming.

Find more of Andy’s work at www.andreahoff.com