How can collaborative doctoral research support the public good? The doctoral students of the 2025/26 PSI cohort reimagine traditional academic research with action-oriented and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Since its inception in 2015, UBC’s Public Scholars Initiative (PSI) has been supporting UBC doctoral students whose research extends beyond traditional approaches to address complex challenges facing the public. Now in its 11th year, the PSI has supported more than 400 exceptional PhD students in nearly every discipline and faculty, expanding in 2022 to include the Okanagan campus.
These scholars have worked in collaboration with, and to the benefit of, an extraordinary range of partners across the globe – from Indigenous communities, to hospitals, to K-12 schools, to government agencies, to cultural institutions, to private industry, and many more.
32 doctoral students from Vancouver campus join the program this year, alongside four new Public Scholars from the Okanagan campus. In continued support of public scholarship work across UBC, a total nearing $370,000 will be awarded to new and existing Public Scholars this year. Funding for the Health Equity Stream, launched in partnership with UBC Health, also continues to facilitate research improving equity within local, national, and global health systems. Scholars in the Health Equity Stream are noted with an asterisk (*) below.
Congratulations to the 2025/26 cohort of Public Scholars! Learn more about their innovative research in their profiles below.
UBC Vancouver
NAME | PROGRAM | FACULTY | PROJECT TITLE |
| Hayfaa Abou Ibrahim | Planning (PhD) | Applied Science | Disaster Governance in the Age of Polycrisis: A Study of NGO Collaborations in Post-Disaster Response in Lebanon and Türkiye |
| Youssef Al Bouchi * | Geography (PhD) | Arts | Critical Minerals and the Climate-Security Nexus: Canada and Mexico in a Shifting Geopolitical Landscape |
| Shams Moh'd Fares Khalaf Al-Anzi * | Nursing (PhD) | Applied Science | Contribution of Digital Engagement on Mental Health-related Challenges of West Asian Migrant Youth in British Columbia |
| Leena Alkhammash | Interdisciplinary Studies (PhD) | Graduate Studies | The Student Journey in the Anatomy Lab |
| Kaitlin Berris * | Women+ and Children's Health Sciences (PhD) | Medicine | PedsNutriCo: Co-designing pediatric nutrition guidelines in critical care. |
| Lucy Binfield | Forestry (PhD) | Forestry | The impact of bamboo industry development interventions: A Global Perspective |
| Shirley Chen * | Population and Public Health (PhD) | Medicine | Understanding the public health impacts of evacuations due to climate-related disasters: A mixed methods approach |
| Connie Clark | Nursing (PhD) | Applied Science | Optimization of British Columbia’s New Graduate Nurses’ Transition into Practice: Evidence to Inform Workforce Planning Strategies and Increase Retention |
| Hermandeep Deo | Nursing (PhD) | Applied Science | Navigating Pain and Performance: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Racialized Women's Illness Narratives |
| Imroze Singh Goindval | Population and Public Health (PhD) | Medicine | Transcreating Panjabi-language knowledge on IDDs (autism, ADHD, LD) for families in BC |
| Dana Dmytro * | School and Applied Child Psychology (PhD) | Arts | Shifting Substance Use Trajectories: A Pan-Canadian Study of Specialized School Staff Supporting At-Risk Youth |
| Sean Edgerton | Zoology (PhD) | Science | Applied One Health Genomics: Developing and Implementing New Tools to Address Emerging Infectious Diseases in Humans and Animals |
| Drew Hall | Botany | Science | Breaking plants out of walls and boxes: illuminating the diversity of cell-wall phenolics in mosses and imagining plant reproductive biology teaching and learning through a queer and trans lens |
| Jafar Iqbal | Education | Education | Worker as Educator: Reclaiming Knowledge and Agency in a Repressive Labor Regime in the Global Garment Supply Chain |
| Jalisa Karim * | Women+ and Children's Health Sciences (PhD) | Medicine | Navigation Endometriosis treatments in the context of pregnancy planning |
| Ania Landy | Interdisciplinary Studies (PhD) | Graduate Studies | Older people leading community conversations about a new vision of community health and social care services in a semi-rural community. |
| Yunfei Li | Resources, Environment and Sustainability (PhD) | Science | Walking towards Change: Exploring Engagement Effects of Climate Walks |
| Chen-Mei (Margaret) Lin * | Nursing (PhD) | Applied Science | Co-Designing Better Care: Learning with Diverse Voices to Shape Integrated Older Adult Care |
| Naomi Maldonado-Rodriguez * | Kinesiology (PhD) | Education | Access and engagement with comprehensive HIV care: An intersectional examination of the experiences of migrant women living with HIV |
| Olivia Maracle | Nursing (PhD) | Applied Science | How can understanding ancestral history, blood memory, and instinct contribute to an exploration of the Indigenous nurse as an identity in so-called-Canada? |
| Fideline Awasiri Mboringong | Forestry (PhD) | Forestry | Understanding and integrating diverse values in decision-making for large-scale projects (mining and related infrastructure) in Cameroon’s South and East Regions. |
| Jessica Mukiri | Resources, Environment and Sustainability (PhD) | Science | Navigating Change - A Just Transition for Livestock Farmers in British Columbia |
| Sean O'Rourke | Forestry (PhD) | Forestry | zuminstm e tmíxʷ kt ƛ̓əq̓ƛ̓áq̓tn̓ (we care for the land of T’eqt’aqtn): Rebuilding ƛ̓əq̓ƛ̓áq̓tn̓mx (Kanaka Bar Band) governance and stewardship through an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area |
| Ana Polgar | Planning (PhD) | Applied Science | Seeing through Satellites, Streets and Stories: Contextualising Nature Based Solutions in Emerging Cities |
| Kimberly Rondeau * | Interdisciplinary Studies (PhD) | Graduate Studies | The relationship between housing, health status, and incarceration in British Columbia. |
| Lilith South | Botany (PhD) | Science | Environmental diversity of divergent eukaryotic parasites, Microsporidia and Mikrocytida |
| Joachim Stassart | Forestry (PhD) | Forestry | Addressing land grabbing in Brazil: evaluating the opportunities and risks of digital transformation in land governance to foster accountability and climate justice |
| Amrit Tamang | Anthropology (PhD) | Arts | Labour, Mobility, and Indigeneity in the Himalaya: An Ethnography of Tamang Porters in Nepal's Trekking Industry |
| Amrit Tiwana * | Planning (PhD) | Applied Science | Advancing Equitable Access to Essential Health Services: A High-Resolution Long-Range Planning Tool for Metro Vancouver |
| Jiin Yoo | Educational Studies (PhD) | Education | Supporting Adolescent Children through the Canadian Education System: A Critical Ethnographic Study of Immigrant Parents' Learning Trajectories |
| Molly Zhang | Resources, Environment and Sustainability (PhD) | Science | Mobilizing Community Knowledge and Institutional Supports for Edible Native Plant Adoption in Cape Town |
| Yangshuying (Kate) Zhou | Linguistics (PhD) | Arts | N/A |
UBC Okanagan
name | program | faculty | project |
| Kelsey Doyle | Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies—Global Studies | UBC Okanagan – Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies CCGS | Ecological Storytelling: Indigenous-led Filmmaking and Intergenerational Knowledge Transmission in the Outer Islands of Micronesia |
| Carolyn Crawford | Psychological Science/Psychology | UBC Okanagan – Department of Psychology | "Psyched about Psychedelics? Investigating perceptions of psilocybin in people living with pain to inform a knowledge translation initiative." |
| Rohene Bouajram | Education | UBC Okanagan – Department of Education | "Time Remembers Her Name: How Women of Colour Transform the Future of Leadership Through Ancestral Knowledge" |
Nassim Zand Dizari | Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies, In Community Engagement, Social Change, and Equity | UBC Okanagan – College of Graduate Studies | Sound, Memory, and Embodied Belonging: Exploring Iranian Women Refugees’ Everyday Lives in Metro Vancouver |
About the PSI
The PSI was launched in 2015 to support UBC doctoral students whose research extended beyond traditional/academic disciplinary approaches. Recognized at the Reimagining the PhD Symposium 2017 as ‘revolutionary' and praised in the UBC Strategic Plan as "a key component" of UBC's Public Relevance strategy, the PSI has also received multiple awards for its promotion of excellence and exceptional service to students. Over 400 scholars have been accepted into the program during the past decade, leading to collaborations with almost 200 different partners in more than 40 different countries. To learn more about how the PSI program reimagines the PhD, visit their website.
Learn more about the Public Scholars Initiative.