I am a human geographer and interdisciplinary scholar focused on urban politics, planning, and policing in Canada. I approach this work with an interest in social and racial justice, and often draw on relevant work in Black studies and Black geographies to document how ideas about "race" shape urban policies and practices, and how social and racial justice movements imagine and seek to create different urban worlds.
Most of my work can be grouped into two broad categories:
– Urban planning and anti-blackness. Inspired by the long history of Black struggle against urban planning in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I have traced how anti-blackness (or simply anti-Black racism) has shaped urban planning ideas and practices in Halifax from the late 19th century to the present. This work is best represented in my book Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax (University of Toronto Press, 2018). Recently, I have extended this work to Montreal, examining how new urban planning ideas and new tenants' rights in the 1980s were ultimately used to evict Black tenants in an emerging war on drugs and gangs.
– Urban security and policing. In a variety of studies, I have sought to document the prevalence of racial profiling and violence in policing and security practices, as well as the repression of movements to transform the police. This work, largely focused on Montreal, is best represented in my co-authored book, Out to Defend Ourselves: A History of Montreal's First Haitian Street Gang (Fernwood Press, 2023). This work also includes a participatory-action research project with racialized youth in the neighbourhood of Saint-Michel, various reports and media articles on policing and crime, a history of efforts to combat racial profiling and violence, and an ongoing project examining how Montreal's war on street gangs since the late 1980s has transformed policing and urban security.
I am interested in supervising masters and PhD research on municipal politics, policing, and planning, particularly in the city of Montreal.
PhD Supervision
Joint PhD Programme:
Concordia University, University of Quebec at Montreal, University of Montreal
PhD in Humanities, Concordia University.
Completed
Andrea Zeffiro, The Location of Practice, January, 2011. Post doc, SFU-Surry with Diane Gromala.
Jennifer Willet, (Re) Embodying Biotechnology, Sept. 2009. Research-creation project in the Humanities. Tenure track position, University of Windsor.
Caroline Caron, Vues, mais non entendues. Les adolescentes québécoises francophones et
l’hypersexualisation de la mode et des medias, Aug, 2009. Post-doc, University of Ottawa.
Judith Nicholson, Killing Time; The Cellular Telephone from Dick Tracey to Abu Ghraib, June, 2008.
Tenure-track position WLU; Concordia Doctoral Thesis Prize.
Kenneth Werbin: The list serves: apparatuses of security and governmentality, April 11, 2008. Post-doc, Ryerson University’s Infolab; tenure-track position, Wilfrid Laurier.
Linnet Fawcett, Writing the Skating Body: Movement, Affect Space, Dec. 15, 2006. Post-doc, Centre for Research Ethics, University of Montreal.
Robyn Diner, Unruly Bodies and the Politics of Irony, Sept. 10, 2004.
Clive Robertson, Movement Apparatus: Artist-Run Centres in Canada, Sept. 10, 2004 (co-supervised with Martin Allor) Tenure-track position at Queens University.
Sandra Gabriele, Gendering the Woman Journalist: Toronto 1890-1900, April 2, 2004. Tenure-track position at the University of Windsor.
Thomas Haig, The Conversant Community, fall 2001. Full time employment at Ser-Zero, Montreal as research and community outreach coordinator.
Maria Nengeh Mensah, L’anatomie du l’invisible: le corps femme et le sida, spring, 2001. Tenure track position, UQAM. Dr. Mensah now holds a Quebec government Research Chair at UQAM.
Sheryl Hamilton, Thinking Machines: a history of the representation of new technologies, fall, 2000. Post-doc, University of Toronto.Tenure track position at Carelton. Dr. Hamilton holds a CRC in Communications and Law.
Josephine Mills, Public Occupations: Theorizing Art and ‘the Public,’ August, 1999. Tenure track position at the University of Lethbridge.
Julianne Pidduck, Intimate Spaces and Flights of Fancy: Gendered Movement in Contemporary Costume Drama, November, 1997. Post-doc, Warwick University. Tenure track position at the University of Montreal.
Masters Supervision (completed)
Jessica Antony, Negotiated Rebelion: Tattooed Women (September, 2008)
Amy McKinnon, Girl Power, (October, 2007).
Robyn Fadden, Endoscopes, Microscopes and the Visual Culture of Communication, (October, 2007)
Heather Peters, Sex workers in Thailand (Sept, 2007).
Mélanie Hogan, Queering the Archive, (August, 2007).
Rachel Matlow, Love, Angel, Appropriation, Baby: Gwen Stefani as Intertextual celebrity, (April 2007).
Lesley Husbands, Miracles and Monsters: Representations of Motherhood (April 2007)
Jeny Nussey, Tensions and Contradictions: The Dr. Phil Show, (January, 2005)
Nikki Porter, In Search of the Slayer: Audience negotiation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (April 2004)
Susan Goodyear, Schizophrenia as metaphor: madness and the cinematic asylum, (April, 2004)
Jennifer Anisef, The politics of craft, (March 2004).
Anna Friz, Pirate Jenny, (April, 2003)
Linda Kay, Representing the Real, (April, 2001).
Chantal Francouer, Journalism and Ethnography, (May, 2001)
Sandra Dametto, The State of the Union: an on-line documentary, (April, 2001)
Katherine Liberovskaya, Media Art, (Fall, 2000)
Sheryl Shore, Touching Bone, (September, 1999)
Linnet Fawcett, The Epistolary Pact: Letters to Ms. (August, 1999)
Jacob Bakan, “Communication and Self Expression” (August, 1998)
Katarina Soukup, “Radio Bicyclette: Rozlach 68″ (September, 1998)
Luba Krekhovetsky, “Ukrainians on the Internet” (September, 1998)
Jennifer de Freitas, “Heritage Tourism as Secular Pilgrimmage,” (May 1998)
Dipti Gupta, Working and Networking: Indian Women Make Documentary Films (October, 1997)
Lisa Monk, “(April, 1997)
Susan Schutta, Stop the Presses: Aboriginal Newspapers in Canada, (February, 1997)
Iain Cook, “The Jazz of the Web,” (April 1996)
Justine Akman, Considering the Context: Women in the Association of Progressive Communications. (Sept. 1995)
Maureen Bradley,Reframing the Montreal Massacre: A feminist interrogation, (May, 1995)
Gordon Thompson, The Ontology of Technology (September, 1993)
Rhona Davies, Talk, Television and Tannen (May, 1993)
MFA Supervision (completed)
Frances Leeming, Open Media, 2001
Jen Southern, “Crash,” March , 1996 (MFA, Open Media)
Louise Wilson, “Abulia,” March 1996 (MFA, Open Media)
Book Chapters (2014 -2016)
Sawchuk, Kim. “Impairment,” in Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, Eds. Peter Adey, et al. New York: Routledge, 2014. 409-421.
Sawchuk, Kim, and Barbara Crow. “Ageing the Mobile Imaginary: Stories-so-far,” in Materialities of the Mobile Imaginary, Eds. A. Hermann, T. Swiss, and J. Hadlaw. Oakland: Sage, 2015.
Sawchuk, Kim, and Barbara Crow. “Ageing Mobile Media,” in Routledge Companion to Mobile Media. Eds Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth New York: Routledge, 2015. 249-276.
https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415809474
Sawchuk, Kim, and Barbara Crow. “Tactical Restriction: Seniors and Cell Phones,” in Technologies of Mobility in the Americas, Eds. Phillip Vannini et al. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2012 157-174.
Sawchuk, Kim, and Constance Lafontaine. “Accessing Interaction: Ageing with
Technologies and the Place of Access,” in Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Design for Aging. Eds. Zhou, Jia, Salvendy, Gavriel. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2015. 210-220. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-20892-3_21
Articles (2015-2016)
Chapman Owen, and Kim Sawchuk. "Creation-as-Research: Critical Making in Complex Environments." RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review 40.1 (2015): 49-52.
Chapman, Owen, and Kim Sawchuk. "A pesquisa-criação explicada: quatro modos interligados. [Unravelling Research-Creation: four inter-related articulations.]" In Teorias Da Comunicação No Brasil e No Canadá. [Theories of Communication in Brazil and Canada], Eds. L.C. Martino et al., Salvador: EDUFBa (2015): 91–109.
http://teoriasetecnologiasdacomunicacao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/teoria-meios-comunicacao_v1.pdf
Forthcoming
Sawchuk, Kim. “From Entrails to Orifices: phenomenological aesthetics and Mona Hatoum’s Corps étranger,” in Embodied Politics. Eds. Janice Hdlacki and Sarah Brophy. (2016: in editing at University of Toronto Press).
Articles (non-refereed)
Sawchuk, Kim. “Patient Care,” in Empathography, Ed. Christine Lammer. Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 2012. 15-31.
