Authors’ Bios
Kaveenaa Chandrasekaran graduated from the Bachelor of Science of Nursing program in 2021 and from the Master of Nursing program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2024. Her Master’s thesis is titled “The Health Implications of Social Isolation and Loneliness Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review.” She is currently working as a project manager for the Inclusive Communities for Older Immigrants, a multidisciplinary, multi-sector, multi-province research project that aims to generate knowledge on social isolation and connectedness among older immigrants. Kaveenaa is a registered nurse who is trained to work in a wide range of clinical settings, including general medicine, rehabilitation, palliative, and acute care.
Nishana Chandrasekaran is a first-year undergraduate nursing student and research assistant at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has clinical experience as a nursing student, providing care to older immigrants from diverse ethnic backgrounds in a rehabilitation medicine unit. Her research interests and passions include immigrant, refugee, and older adult health.
Habib Chaudhury is chair and professor in the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. His research and consulting work focuses on the physical environment for people with dementia in long-term care facilities, memories of home and personhood in dementia, community planning and urban design for active aging, and dementia-friendly communities. His published books include Environments in an Aging Society: Autobiographical Perspectives in Environmental Gerontology (Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Vol 38, 2018; co-edited with F. Oswald), Remembering Home: Rediscovering the Self in Dementia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), and Home and Identity in Later Life: International Perspectives (Springer, 2005; co-edited with G. Rowles). He is affiliated with the Centre for Research on Personhood in Dementia at the University of British Columbia and Alzheimer Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, and is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Aging and Environment.
Daphne Cheung is an associate professor at the School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is a gerontological nursing scientist with extensive clinical and research experience focusing on dementia care, related symptom management, and dementia caregiver support. She is also working with international interdisciplinary research teams to develop interventions to address the physical and psychosocial needs of older adults, such as frailty, loneliness, dementia, caregiver stress, and anticipatory grief. Her team has recently introduced technology into elder care research.
Sammy Chu is a research assistant and fourth-year undergraduate nursing student at Toronto Metropolitan University. She also has a Bachelor of Science degree from Western University. Her research interests include health issues related to women, East Asian immigrants, family caregivers, and aging.
Luna (Jiayue) Fan is a research assistant and a graduate of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is a recent immigrant and enjoys working with patients from diverse cultural backgrounds. Her research interests include health promotion and health equity issues among visible minorities as well as the provision of culturally sensitive care, such as health interventions targeting new immigrants.
Amanda Grenier is a professor and the Norman and Honey Schipper Chair in Gerontological Social Work at the University of Toronto and Baycrest Hospital. Prior to this, she was the inaugural director of the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging and Gilbrea Chair at McMaster University, and an associate professor at the McGill School of Social Work. Her research focuses on aging and inequality and has included topics such as life course transitions, social constructs of frailty, aging with a disability, social isolation, late-life homelessness, and precarity and aging (SSHRC, ESDC, CIHR). Her books include Transitions and the LifeCourse (Policy Press), Precarity and Late Life (co-edited; Policy Press), and Late Life Homelessness (MQUP).
Sepali Guruge, RN, is a professor at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has 30 years of experience in community-based, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research focusing on immigration and settlement. She has worked closely with academic, public, and not-for-profit service sectors, advocacy groups, and ethno-cultural communities. She has focused on the intersections of aging and immigration for more than 15 years and her research findings have been disseminated in more than 15 languages. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her contributions to nursing and social sciences; examples of her work can be accessed at: www.ImmigrantHealthResearch.ca
Shreemouna Gurung is a PhD candidate in the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. Her research is focused on person-centred care for ethnically diverse older adults in long-term care homes. She also engages in community-based participatory research related to aging in the right place for older adults experiencing homelessness, as well as qualitative research on health and quality of life of people with spinal cord injury.
Jill Hanley is a professor at the McGill School of Social Work where she teaches social policy, community development, and migration. She is also scientific director of the SHERPA University Institute, mandated by the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services to conduct applied research and training on access to care for migrants and ethno-racial minority groups. Her research focuses on access to social rights (housing, labour, health) for precarious-status migrants, as well as their individual, family, and collective strategies to defend their rights. She is co-founder of the Immigrant Workers Centre, where she has been actively involved for more than 20 years.
Jill Hoselton is a registered social worker in Alberta and a PhD student at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include intersectionality, discourse analysis, critical whiteness studies, and anti-racist and anti-colonial social work. Jill holds both Bachelor and Master of Social Work degrees and currently works as a graduate research assistant on the Aging in the Right Place project.
Kandasamy Illanko has a BSc in electronic engineering and a MASc and PhD in electrical and computer engineering. He obtained his MASc from the University of Toronto as a Commonwealth Scholar, and then worked for more than 15 years in the software industry. He completed his PhD at Toronto Metropolitan University, and has since been with the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering as a lecturer and research associate. His research interests include neural networks and deep learning.
Vibha Kaushik is the director of research and policy development at Immigrant Services Calgary. Her research centres on newcomer settlement and integration, diversity and intersectionality, welcoming communities, social development, and linguistic challenges of non-native speakers. Her most recent work examines the settlement and integration needs of skilled immigrants in Calgary. She is a registered social worker and holds a PhD and a master’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in German.
Christina Klassen currently works with complex cross-cultural cases of children in out-of-home care in the Australian foster care system. She is a former MA student at McGill University in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry and completed her BA, Joint Honours, in Linguistics and Psychology. In her SSHRC- and FRSQ-funded research, under the supervision of Drs. Mónica Ruiz-Casares and Cécile Rousseau, she investigated how the migration and resettlement experiences of Syrian refugee mothers influence their well-being, parenting practices, and family relationships. She has also worked with the SHERPA University Institute in Montreal to explore caregiving and community support in the context of migration, as well as translation and interpretation services during crisis events. Her research privileges the voices of participants, and her findings have informed clinical practice and policymaking, particularly in contexts of migration and cultural complexity.
Charlotte Lee is an associate professor at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, Toronto Metropolitan University. She focuses on health services evaluation and collaboration in healthcare, and is particularly interested in understanding how interpersonal relationships affect teamwork processes and healthcare outcomes within a diverse population. She is also a certified oncology nurse working on health services issues associated with cancer care, such as role definition for specialty oncology nurses, work environment issues, and knowledge translation from research to clinical settings.
Doris Leung graduated with a BScN in 1987 from Western University. As a registered nurse, she worked in various facets of mental health for 10 years, including general psychiatry, emergency psychiatry, ambulatory care for special needs children, and at a psychiatric day hospital. In 1997, she obtained her Master of Nursing at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, and was a nurse educator for a mental health inpatient unit for a community hospital in Toronto. In 2010, she obtained her PhD in philosophy from the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, where she then became an assistant professor. After moving to Hong Kong in 2013, she worked as a teaching fellow at the School of Nursing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Since returning to Toronto in 2020, she has held the title of adjunct assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, School of Nursing. She engages in qualitative research related to family caregiving, palliative end-of-life care, and cultural competencies in health and social science education and practice.
Ernest Leung is an MA student in the joint Communication and Culture program at York University and Toronto Metropolitan University. His research interests include comedy studies, political economy of media, and cultural studies. He is a recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarship and is currently working on his MA thesis, exploring the use of stand-up comedy to address anti-Asian racism in North America during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is an associate at the York Centre for Asian Research and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies. He has an honours bachelor of arts in English from the University of Toronto, and is currently working as a research assistant at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Paola Ortiz Loaiza holds a PhD in international development from the University of Ottawa, where she also worked on the Aging Well project. Her research interests include the political economy of equity and inclusion, and she has analyzed political and economic empowerment among women and Indigenous and racialized communities in Canada and Latin America.
Ryan Lok is a PhD Candidate in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. He holds a Master of Planning in Urban Development from Toronto Metropolitan University and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies with a Minor in Sociology from the University of Calgary. His research interests include the intersection of planning and immigration, including topics of cultural diversity, place, and belonging.
Hai Luo is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba and a registered social worker. Her research addresses social and health issues of older adults of diverse cultural backgrounds and the implications to social theory and practice. Her publications include global Indigenous aging, cross-cultural aging, mental health and substance abuse in older adults, long-term care, sexuality and older adults, gambling in older adults, elder abuse, social capital of older adults, and social work leadership. Dr. Luo is active in gerontological education and international collaboration (Finland, Taiwan, and China). She currently is the Chair of the Human Research Ethics Board 1 and a research affiliate of the Centre on Aging at the University of Manitoba.
Atiya Mahmood is a professor in the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. Her postsecondary education in architecture focused on the relationships between environment and behaviour, and her postdoctoral training was in environmental gerontology. She has received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada (SSHRC); Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC); Human Resource and Social Development, Canada (HRSDC); and Accessibility Canada. Her research interests include urban design, mobility, and social participation of older adults and persons with disabilities; social engagement in multi-unit buildings; housing insecurity and aging in the right place, neighbourhood environments and active living; and linkage of innovative housing and support services to age-friendly communities and aging in place.
Franco Ng is a research assistant and a graduate of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Toronto Metropolitan University. His professional experience includes working at long-term care facilities, palliative care settings, as well as serving on the executive of the Asian Student’s Association. His research interests include aging and health among immigrants and the well-being of their family caregivers. He also focuses on East Asian culture, youth mentorship, and immigrant health, and has presented nationally about East Asian alternative therapies and their implications for nursing practice.
Melissa Northwood is an assistant professor with the School of Nursing at McMaster University and a certified gerontological nurse. She is an applied health services researcher and previous CIHR Health System Impact Fellow, who conducts collaborative research in partnerships with older adults and health and social care providers to improve the well-being of older adults. Her research program seeks to enhance care quality, the culture of the practice environment, and health system transformation through a learning health system. Melissa had a lengthy practice career across health care sectors from acute care to home care, with a focus on older adults with multiple chronic conditions.
Hector Goldar Perrote holds a master’s degree in human geography from Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His previous work explored immigration policy, aging populations, and the connections between them, and before joining the Norwegian University of Science and Technology he was a Blue Book trainee at the European Commission.
Lisa Seto Nielsen is an associate professor at the School of Nursing, York University. She completed her doctorate at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. Her research integrates the areas of palliative care, death and dying, home care, caregiving, vulnerable groups, racialized immigrants, and the healthcare system. Her approach to research is informed by critical social theory, such as postcolonialism and intersectionality, and critical qualitative methodologies. Her current work focuses on the cancer and palliative care experiences of undocumented immigrants who often lack health insurance and have precarious employment and limited social and legal protections, and how the intersections of these dynamics affect marginalized populations.
Souraya Sidani is an experienced quantitative research methodologist. As principal and co-investigator, she has received funding for more than 125 studies (totalling more than $45 million). Her work focuses on the design and evaluation of health and patient-centred interventions, patient-centred care, self-report measures for assessing different concepts (e.g., intervention acceptability, satisfaction and preferences, self-care ability), and the refinement of research methods and measures for determining the clinical effectiveness of interventions. She has authored several books on the design, implementation, and evaluation of health interventions and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles.
Denise L. Spitzer is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta and an adjunct professor in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, where she was the Canada Research Chair (2005–2015) in Gender, Migration and Health and a principal scientist at the Institute of Population Health. She is a critical feminist anthropologist and engages in participatory research with migrant communities around the world to explore how global processes, mediated through intersectionality, relate to health and well-being.
Robert Ta graduated from the Honours Biomedical Science program at Trent University in 2024. He has experience working with older adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds in retirement-community settings. His research interests include immigrant and older adult health.
Tharsiny Thavarasa received her MPH at Western University in 2018. Her research focuses on improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities. She leverages her public health background, along with her data analytics skills, to address public health issues. She has also worked on a sustainable diets policy for Scottish National Health Services as part of their initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Christine A. Walsh is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. Her research explores violence across the lifespan. Her community- based, arts-informed, and action-oriented research involves collaborations with populations affected by social exclusion, poverty, and homelessness, including people with histories of incarceration, immigrants, and older adults.
Margaret Walton-Roberts is a professor in the Geography and Environmental Studies program at Wilfrid Laurier University and is affiliated with the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Her research focuses on migration-related themes with a focus on South Asian migration, gender, and skilled migration. She has published more than 40 book chapters and 50 journal articles, as well as co-edited books including Diasporas, Development and Governance (Springer Global Migration Series), The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery Concept (University of Pennsylvania Press), A National Project: Canada’s Syrian Refugee Resettlement Experience (McGill-Queens University Press), and Global Migration, Gender and Health Professional Credentials: Transnational Value Transfers and Losses (forthcoming, University of Toronto Press).
Lu Wang is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research areas include geography of health and healthcare; spatial epidemiology; the COVID-19 pandemic; spatial mobility and risk perception; transnational healthcare; and ethnic retailing. Her research has been funded by a range of sources including SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council), CIHR Operating Grant/COVID-19 Rapid Response, CIHR Planning and Dissemination Grant, and the RBC Immigrant, Diversity and Inclusion Project. She has published widely and has also contributed chapters to several edited books including A Research Agenda for Migration and Health (Elgar), Immigrant Experiences in North America (Canadian Scholars’ Press), Immigrants in US and Canadian Cities (Oxford), and Wal-Mart World: The World’s Biggest Corporation in the Global Economy (Routledge).
Alexandra Wehr holds a master’s (MASc) degree from the Environmental Applied Science and Management program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on spatial accessibility to neighbourhood amenities and natural environmental features, health among older adults, and GIS analysis.
Paige (Pei-Chun) Wen graduated from the University of Leuven, Belgium in 2014 with a PhD in architecture, focusing on landscape urbanism. She is the author of several book chapters, journal articles, and a book based on her PhD thesis: Water Urbanism: Water Conflicts and the Interplay of Production Landscapes and Settlements: Chia-Nan Plain, Taiwan. She was a lecturer and studio teacher on housing design at National Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan and Peking University in China for bachelors and masters students focusing on housing designs. Her research interests include housing typology, the movement of new infill housings across North America, and related emerging issues such as aging in place. She moved to Toronto in 2015 and is currently pursuing her architecture license while she works as an intern architect on commercial and residential projects.
Jason Wong is a staff radiation oncologist at the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre and at the University of Toronto.
Madelaine Woo is a fourth-year undergraduate student in the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). She is also pursuing a minor in English. Madelaine has published articles on Project Protech and Fashion Art Toronto, as well as co-authored a scoping review on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Toronto. As a third-generation immigrant, she has a strong interest in using her voice to help racialized immigrants.
Radamis Zaky holds a doctorate in Women’s Studies from the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on activism among Arab and Muslim women in the Middle East and within diasporic communities in Canada. Additionally, he is an active member of the Arab Canadian Research Group at the University of Ottawa.
Fanyuan Zhang came to Canada as an international student in 2004. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in social work in 2006 and a master’s degree in social work in 2012, both from McGill University. He has worked for community organizations and government agencies in Montreal, serving vulnerable populations including the elderly, people with mild intellectual disabilities, immigrants, and youth at risk. His academic interests focus on immigrants (particularly Chinese) and gerontology. He has personal experience with sponsoring and supporting his parents, and leverages this in his work on ensuring access to appropriate services and support for elderly Chinese in Montreal. His goal is to open a non-profit organization for Chinese elderly in need, providing them with culturally sensitive services.
HeeJin Zhou completed the Master of Health Science Education program at McMaster University in 2015 and has worked for McMaster University’s Faculty of Health Sciences and McMaster Children’s Hospital, coordinating various research projects in program development and evaluation. She recently worked on a research project at Toronto Metropolitan University focusing on elder abuse among immigrant communities. She is currently pursuing a social service work diploma at Sheridan College, bridging her passion for understanding individual and collective resilience-building at the clinical front lines while promoting greater access and system navigation support for marginalized communities.
Zhixi Zhuang is a registered professional planner and an associate professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University. As the Academic Director of the Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement and Founder and Director of DiverCityLab (www.divercitylab.com), her research explores the intersection of immigrant settlement, urban landscapes, and municipal policies in topics related to building welcoming infrastructure in non-traditional gateway cities, immigrant entrepreneurship and city building, ethnic place-making in ‘third places,’ migration and suburban transformation, and the role of municipal planning in immigrant settlement and integration. She has conducted mixed-method, arts-informed, and community-based research, effectively engaging immigrant community members and city building professionals to gain a holistic perspective on immigrant integration, place-making, civic engagement, and inclusive policy-making.