AMY KIPP
PhD
Conducting interdisciplinary, qualitative research to explore the everyday practices, spaces, and relationships of care.
Community arts and engagement in public policy making
In the field of public policy art-based activities have been used to engage community members throughout the different phases of public policy formation. There are many possibilities of such artful engagement. For example, it can provide an accessible entry point for affected community members to contribute to public policy, disrupt routine ways of thinking making policy decisions, and cultivate conversations across difference. Notwithstanding these possibilities, questions remain about how this can be done in an equity-centred, ongoing, and relational way, including what spaces, practices, and relationships can facilitate such engagement. This research explores the role community art hubs can play in meaningfully engaging equity deserving groups in local public policymaking.
Public policy, community arts hubs, civic engagement, local governance
Feminist methodologies in digital research
This research focuses on feminist approaches to digital research methods. It applies feminist principles of reflexivity, relationality, and transformational change to social media research, exploring the possibilities and challenges this presents. Specifically, in partnership with a team of international, interdisciplinary scholars this research engages with the new ethical, methodological, and practical questions involved in social media research, including questions of consent, working within capitalist platforms, and relational accountability in digital spaces.
Digital methods, social media, feminist methodologies
Visit www.feministdigitalresearch.ca to learn more
Kahaani: South Asian stories of Oxford County
Through this project, we invite stories from South Asian community members living in Oxford County. Over the last decade several rural municipalities in Ontario have experienced growing racial diversity. Oxford County is one of them. This is due, in large part, to increased South Asian immigration in the region. Despite the growing South Asian diaspora in communities across Canada, limited research has explored the everyday experiences of this population in rural areas, or the impact of such rapid immigration on local rural governance. The goals of this project are twofold; first, to contribute community-based knowledge about the social, cultural, and economic opportunities and challenges of South Asian community members in Oxford County; and second, to explore creative methods for engaging diverse South Asian residents in local decision making aimed at improving their experiences making a life in the region.
South Asian stories, racialized rural Ontario, immigration, local governance
Art in a Just Recovery
Art in a Just Recovery was a local community arts project that explored community care in the context of pandemic recovery in Guelph, Ontario. Through a series of online and in-person workshops facilitated by Art Not Shame, Social Artist Mel Schambach, and the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, participants created individual art pieces that form a large-scale mural. Alongside the mural project was an accompanying community-based research project, building knowledge about community care and collective artmaking.
For a full list of community artists and to learn more see Art Not Shame's website: click here to learn more
Knowledge building, community knowledge, community care, collective artmaking, stories
The spaces, practices, and experiences of CareMongering
The first CareMongering Facebook group was created in Toronto, Canada in early March 2020, as a community-based response to COVID-19. The goal of the group was to counteract fear(mongering) with care(mongering) and to organize at the local level to ensure all community members could access basic necessities, services, and resources during the pandemic. This research explored this movement from a feminist perspective, tracing the spread of CareMongering, how it is practiced at a local level, and the experiences of CareMongering group members and organizers.
CareMongering, critical community care, mutual aid, care work, emotional labour, COVID-19
Everyday, lived experiences of social interventions in the Global South
As a research associate in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo I supported qualitative research in the Phillipines exploring how frontline health care workers, non-profit staff, and community members were impacted by social interventions in the context of the pandemic and other socioeconomic challenges. This included exploring the implementation of community healthcare programs and conditional cash transfer programs, as well as pandemic response.
community health care workers, food insecurity, pandemic response
Community-based environmental and health monitoring in the North
From 2017-2019 I was a research associate with the Climate Change and Global Health Research Group (CCGHRG) based in the Population Medicine Department at the University of Guelph, the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, and supported by the Labrador Camus of Memorial University. I worked with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to explore the implementation of a community-based monitoring program to monitor the impacts of climate change on Inuit wellbeing in Northern Canada, as well as Inuit-led research on the connection between caribou and Inuit wellbeing.
community-based monitoring, Inuit-led research, climate change, mental health and wellbeing, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada
Shaping the volunteer tourist bubble: Gendered and racialized experiences of volunteer tourism
Volunteer tourism is a feminized sector of international travel. Most volunteer tourists are young, white, middle-class women from the Global North, with a roughly four to one ratio of women to men participating.
The drive to ‘help’ and the resulting encounters in volunteer tourism are embedded in power dynamics such as patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism. Through patriarchy and colonialism white women have been constructed as ‘helpers’ and ‘caregivers’ - and even ‘white saviours’ - in the sector. This research uses a gender lens to explore how volunteer tourists’ gendered and racialized subjectivities shape and are shaped by their experiences while volunteering in the Global South with development-focused projects.
volunteer tourism, feminist analysis, gendered and racialized subjectivities, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, Canada, Guatemala
The impacts of cause-related marketing on international development
Cause-related marketing (CRM), campaigns that combine consumption in the Global North with international development causes in the Global South, is an increasingly popular phenomenon. This research explores the role of CRM in consumer culture, considering how consumers are made responsible for international development issues through this practice. Ultimately, this article argues that the responsibilization of individuals into “development consumers” is inherently problematic because of how these processes 1) simplify development issues, 2) frame consumers as the solution to development, and 3) maintain markets that reinforce the unequal power dynamic between “development consumers” and the intended beneficiaries in the Global South.
ethical consumption, cause-related marketing, international development, social enterprises, Global North