I completed my MA through the course-based option where the breadth of courses spanned human rights frameworks, social justice practices, research design, political economy, digital culture, risk governance, and trauma and witnessing. Each term added a new layer, and with each layer it changed how I listen, interpret systems, and make decisions in my current settings.
The course list matters – but what actually matters more is how the learning changed my worldview. One reading in particular contributed, quote that connected the dots between politics, economy, and participation was Dasgupta’s statement “Democracy in its twentieth century Western guise is not compatible with just any economic arrangement” (Dasgupta, 2020, p. 48). This stuck with me to take notice for how systems can erode/dismantle participation while still sounding normal and/or polite, and why clarity is so important when public language is used to manage consent rather than strengthen justice.
Fall 2022 – First Cohort
HRSJ5010 Foundations of Human Rights and Social Justice
This course moved across human rights law, social movements, reconciliation, disability rights, and transnational governance, while grounding our learning in the theoretical tools of intersectionality, anticolonial frameworks, feminist analysis with a lens for keeping our practice in view. The emphasis on Indigenous and Global South perspectives shifted not just what I studied, but how I approached everything that followed. Dr. Robert Hanlon and Dr. Monica Sanchez facilitated our learning journey.
I had the opportunity to participate in an one-day event, held on April 14, 2023, a collaborative initiative involving Global Affairs Canada, the Asia Pacific Policy Project (CAPPP), the Faculty of Arts at Thompson Rivers University, and partner organizations. The event focused on a simulation-based, round‑table format that invited participants to work through complex human rights challenges facing Canada as it seeks to implement and operationalize its recently announced Indo‑Pacific Strategy. Through this experience, participants engaged in policy analysis, dialogue, and practical problem‑solving grounded in real‑world international contexts.
Artifact: Editorial Brief: A series on the Rohingya Repatriation Crisis for Canada Global – a team brief created during the Graduate Student Symposium on ‘Human Rights in the Indo-Pacific’ at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops in April 2023.
Winter 2023
HRSJ5020 Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Resurgence of Land Based Pedagogies and Practices
Land as teacher was the reorientation at the core for this course, and it shaped everything that followed. Moving across Indigenous law, wellness, education, and geography, it grounded our learning in land-based epistemologies and the ethical modes of living that flow from them. Equally, it named clearly how colonial policy worked to sever Indigenous peoples from land, food, water, ceremony, and movement, and how resurgence movements are asserting what was never surrendered. Learning Secwepemctsín language was a welcomed learning outcome which I will forever be grateful. Our learning journey was facilitated by Dr. Jenna Woodrow and Ted Gottfriedson to ground us, with guest speakers Dr. Jillian Balfour (Provost).
Artifact: Story of the Salmon Boy
Fall 2023
HRSJ5120 Settler Colonialism: Decolonization and Responsibility
Among the courses that provided the earliest impact and still stands apart from the others was this gem. Settler colonialism was not gently introduced, it was framed as it deserves, as an ongoing structure, dark and complicated and full of what remains unresolved – its logic traced from colonial expansion into the specific shape it took in Canada and settler states like it. Then it asked a harder questions: where are you in all of this? Who are you in all of this? These questions did not leave the room when the course ended. It stayed with me, shaping how I move in my practice, think and understand the work that remains. Dr. Lisa Cooke and Dr. Robin Westland made that possible, and I have so much gratitude for what each of you gifted.
Artifact: Time & Place: A Personal Journey – A video that explores the intersection of time and place, paralleling my journey of privilege and key moments in Indigenous history.
Winter 2024
HRSJ5030 Problem Solving in the Field: Study Techniques and Methods
What I valued most in this course was the insistence that how we research is as important as what we discover. Spanning multiple disciplines, epistemologies, and methodological traditions including Indigenous and anticolonial approaches practiced in the global south, this course built my capacity to design research that is rigorous and responsible. I completed a full research grant proposal and ethics application that sharpened both my analytical thinking and my sense of accountability – a capacity to lean in and be further inspired. Thank you, to both Dr. Rochelle Stevenson and Dr. Wendy Hulko.
Artifact: Final Assignment – Grant Proposal Submission
Summer 2025
HRSJ5040 Human Rights and Social Justice Field Experience
My practicum was completed with Alethea Global Cooperative, an international education and climate advocacy cooperative I sought out and identified as the right fit for this experience. A full reflection on this experience can be found in the practicum section of this e-portfolio.
Fall 2024
HRSJ5160 Social Justice and Networked Culture: Digital Communities, Mediated Identities and Online Journalism
This course arrived during one of the hardest periods of my life. I was grieving my parents and carrying real doubt about whether I was meant to be completing the program. The work itself was substantial and focused on interrogating networked culture, digital access, structural inequality, and the use of online platforms for social justice. I engaged with it as fully as I could to my cognitive and physical abilities, which was not a lot but I persisted and kept going anyway. What I learned about digital space and civic media has stayed with me – I have reflected and can look back appreciatively to now being inspired to dip my toes into the water of podcasting and the creativity this platform invites to be explored. Dr. Joceline Anderson and Dr. Shannon Smyrl.
Artifact: Digital Dialogues podcast Important note: this episode contains a case study which speaks to the medical experiments on Indigenous people and children in the 1940’s and 1950’s, including experimental trauma and health care struggles. Some listeners may find these themes distressing. Please prioritize your well-being and feel free to skip this episode or sections if needed.
Winter 2025
HRSJ5260 Moral Economies and Social Movements in Contemporary Capitalism
This course was among my greatest discoveries in the program, revealing a love for political sciences and history I had never known was there. Moving through the history of modern political structures, revolution, war, democratization, and the capitalist global order, it gave me a new framework and foundation for understanding how power organizes the world and how people have always pushed back against it. Cosmopolitanism, materialism, and post-structuralism became not just theories but tools, and the questions we examined across disciplines have stayed with me. This was some of my deepest learning about a topic I never would have thought I would engage, all made possible by Dr. Terry Kading and Dr. Alana Toulin. Best teachers ever!!
Artifact: Opinion editorial on Doughnut Economics.
Fall 2025
HRSJ5250 Risk, Place, and Social Justice in a Turbulent World
This course was yet another favourite, and one of the rare opportunities I had to weave my own professional work directly into my research. Examining how risk moves through society and who it impacts, while making the gaps in policy, knowledge, and power impossible to ignore. My final paper focused on historical wildfire governance in BC, arguing that colonial suppression practices have produced lasting socioeconomic inequities, that Indigenous fire stewardship offers situated and proven alternatives, and real risk reduction requires redistributing power and resources toward Indigenous-led governance. The evidence that cultural burning works is not in question. What remains is the harder work of structural transformation. I am grateful to Dr. Terry Kading and Dr. Michael Mehta for their guidance in navigating my argument.
Artifact: Research paper Burning Rights: Colonial Suppression, Indigenous Fire Stewardship, and the Case for Sovereign Wildfire Governance in BC
Winter 2026
HRSJ 5220 Trauma, Rights and Justice: From War and Gender-Based Violence to Peacebuilding
As this was my last class, I found it extremely difficult to stay focused, but a necessity to finalize and round out my personal learning goals. Examining gender-based violence in war and conflict highlighting the causes, dimensions, relationship to broader human rights failures required each of us to sit with material that does not resolve itself easily or neatly. The course was rigorous in its use of critical tools and generous in its attention to healing and peacebuilding. It expanded how I understand trauma, justice, and the long work of repair in post-conflict contexts and I will carry this closely as a move forward. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Annie St. John-Stark for the invitation and opportunity to contribute to the TRU Trauma-Informed Working Group member. Thank you, to both Dr. Annie St. John-Stark and Dr Robin Tapley.
Artifact: Third spaces research paper
HRSJ5940 Master of Arts e-Portfolio
Graduate students create an e-portfolio summarizing their experiences and learning within the MA program and as final assignment with completion of the MAHRSJ. Your feedback is welcome and invite your to share via the Contact Me page.
Sources:
Dasgupta, R. (2020, December). The silenced majority: Can America still afford democracy? Harper’s Magazine.