Turning research into action on student homelessness

[00:00:09] Karine Morin: Those who've completed a degree in Canada know that it's a demanding experience, but for many students without safe or stable housing, the challenge is even greater.  

[00:00:19] Right now across the country, some students are balancing coursework with couch surfing, living in unsafe housing, or facing impossible choices between paying rent, buying groceries, and continuing their education. And for years, this reality has largely been invisible.

[00:00:39] Emily Berg, a PhD student from the University of Alberta, is setting out to change this. As Emily shared at the Federation's Big Thinking Summit in June, research into post-secondary student homelessness across six institutions in several provinces provides an important perspective on student housing.

[00:00:58] Today, we're talking about what it takes to turn evidence into action, how research can move beyond documenting a problem, to helping establish partnerships across sectors to create practical solutions.  

[00:01:12] Through her work, Emily confronts the stigma around student homelessness so that institutions can better respond to students' needs. My name is Karine Morin, and this is the Big Thinking Podcast.

[00:01:34] Karine Morin: Can you tell us as to how you came into this area of research, student homelessness?

[00:01:39] Emily Berg: I was a STEM major; I had an undergrad in biological sciences and psychology, and then did my master's in physiology. But when I first started my master's, I really missed having that social sciences or social humanities piece a part of my degree.

[00:01:55] I really needed to work both sides of my brain, so I started looking for internship opportunities at the university, and there was two available at the time. One was doing a national mental health kind of initiative, and the other one was focused on post-secondary student homelessness and health inequities.

[00:02:12] And so I chatted with the associate dean at the time, Kevin Friese, who ended up being my colleague and co-supervisor, and he basically gave me the option, and I really fell into this research due to kind of personal experience and kind of just wanting to be able to make an impact at a bigger level than what I thought I could do behind my microscope.

[00:02:36] Karine Morin: And you've just sort of alluded to that, a little bit of maybe some personal experience. Did you want to maybe elaborate a little bit of what you were considering bringing to this research area and, and what sort of aspects of those issues might have really been of interest to you in calling out for you in some ways?

[00:02:57] Emily Berg: Yeah, there was a really big intersection I found between student homelessness and health inequity, and also with substance use and mental health challenges. So the kind of mental health initiative was very much one sub-focus into an area, whereas homelessness kind of had all of those layers attached, and for me, that was really personal.

[00:03:14] I have direct family experience on both sides of my family with alcohol use, substance use, really struggling with kind of moments of precarity across the spectrum, and then really directly with my maternal side with dealing with substance use and struggling as a gay man- my uncle’s who I'm speaking to - as a gay man in the United States, and he was forced into conversion therapy, and really forced into carceral settings that were really challenging, and really challenged the family, and really traumatized him.

[00:03:48] And so these were stories that were shared with me when I got older, and he had that varying kind of precarity: using substances, his housing was insecure. And so I really was kind of pushed to be able to use kind of these personal experiences and understandings of that at a deeper level to help these students get out and maybe mitigate the loss of life, as my uncle did end up intentionally choosing to end his life so I didn't want that to be the outcome for a lot of students.

[00:04:16] Karine Morin: So I'm curious if you want to say a little bit more about that layering of what you would be studying, bringing some lived experience and the students that you would've been working with ultimately, this sort of being able to relate to them.

[00:04:31] So researchers, we typically think of as trying to be objective, but here you're bringing some element of lived experience. How would you speak to that layering of research, scholarship, lived experience in the project that you've been involved in?

[00:04:47] Emily Berg: Yeah. I think it's really hard, and I do hear it all the time coming from a STEM background: “We have to be objective" and “there cannot be any bias.” And I think coming into public health, which is now where I'm doing my PhD, and having that background, but also now experiencing sociology and criminology and people accepting our personal experience as strengthening the research.  

[00:05:10] I don't think that you can share and collect - for lack of a better word - human stories and experiences without being able to feel them and being able to reflect on them in some way.

[00:05:21] And if I'm this third objective party, I'm not going to be able to do that. And so being able to understand what these students were going through at a deeper level, I think allowed me to ask better questions and created deeper research results, again, for lack of a better word, than what I would've gotten if I didn't understand what they were going through.

[00:05:41] Karine Morin: So you, you bring that, but then again, I'm curious a little bit about that transition of having initiated all of your studies in a STEM field. When you turn to more of the social science, public health but social science, what additional sort of background preparation or even perhaps in terms of gaining new knowledge that was going to be more directly relevant to the socioeconomic sphere, how did you undertake that part of the work and how did you ultimately prepare to do what was the essence of this project?

[00:06:12] As I understand it, a lot of interviews. So do you want to speak a little bit to maybe some of the literature, getting acquainted with a new area, a new set of knowledge, and then developing the skills for doing interviews

[00:06:27] Emily Berg: Yeah. So luckily, Dr. Eric Weissman, who is the PI of the project, he has lived experience and is a very well-known scholar in the field of homelessness, substance use, kind of all over.

[00:06:39] And so he was honestly my best resource and my best teacher. I could call him at any time, and he is a very interesting man. You can chat with him for like hours on end and then be like, "What did we talk about today?" So he very much, like, was always a resource for me and enabled me to kind of ask questions and work through things that I was struggling with.

[00:06:57] I think also from my background, I had been a crisis responder for about two and a half years at that time. So I had maybe not research-qualitative interview experience, but I had a lot of experience chatting with people about their darkest moments in their darkest moments.  

[00:07:13] And so I think that, again, personal experience allowed me to kind of translate what I knew from my STEM background of rigor and creating protocols and ethics applications, and also being able to bring in that personal piece into it while having resources and co-investigators, and again, Eric as the primary investigator to reach out to.

[00:07:34] Karine Morin: Interesting. So let's start explaining a little bit what this research entailed and, and the different components. So as I understand it, it became quite a broader study with multiple sites, I think up to six institutions now.  

[00:07:49] Tell us a little bit how that evolved and what are these institutions that were selected, why they were selected, and tell us a little bit about the scope of the project that you undertook.

[00:07:59] Emily Berg: So again, Dr. Eric Weissman was the PI of the project, and he started at Red Deer Polytechnic for the beginning of his career. And every time he would teach, he would explain his lived experience, and he would notice that students would come and chat with him and talk to them about how they were also sleeping in their cars or experiencing moments of homelessness or housing insecurity, food precarity, that sort of thing.

[00:08:20] And so he really wanted to look into this deeper. And so when he moved out to New Brunswick, where he is now at the University of New Brunswick, he did this smaller survey at New Brunswick as well as Red Deer to look at what was going on on their campuses and found that a lot of students were struggling.

[00:08:37] And then UTILE did a big cross-national survey and found that about 5% of students were struggling with post-secondary student homelessness. And so from his connection to Alberta and then now his connections out east, he started reaching out to institutions to see who would wanna be a part of this project.

[00:08:54] And so the University of Alberta was a really big site, and then we had some people from University of British Columbia, we had Red Deer Polytechnic, which was then Red Deer College, University of New Brunswick, and then Nova Scotia Community College was a really big one.  

[00:09:10] And so University of Alberta, where I was, and NSCC - Nova Scotia Community College - made up the bulk of the research. And at the beginning, we had, I think, over 20 research assistants across all the sites,  

[]00:09:22 And then I was kind of the one, they called me the coordinator, I was the admin, I was the lead kind of research assistant to herd all of the cats, for lack of a better word, and try and figure out how we can coordinate this national project, cause it is very difficult to work on, I think we had four different time zones at one point, so even having to schedule a meeting is very difficult to do.

[00:09:44] Karine Morin: I'm curious if you would speak a little bit to whether there were clearly some regional distinctions, or you refer to universities, some are very large scale, perhaps some smaller universities, colleges.  

[00:09:57] So did the study that you did, did it point to characteristics that are very localized according to institutions? Or are you recognizing that actually the experience of students will be pretty similar irrespective of the exact location, exact type of institution. What were those sort of findings from having that diversity of institutions involved?

[00:10:20] Emily Berg: Yeah, it was actually pretty similar across the board. And again, we interviewed, it was small, qualitative, we always say we can't, you know, generalize our data cause it was not a big subset.  

[00:10:30] But I will say the experiences that students shared were pretty equal across the board. They were all very much struggling with housing, they were struggling with their mental health, they were struggling with multiple levels of precarity, they didn't know where they were going to eat the next day. They couldn't afford, a lot of the time, to buy food or afford half of their rent, and so they were couch-surfing.  

[00:10:51] So it really wasn't at the institutional level. I think the only difference regionally, and because of the size of the institutions, was the resources that were already available versus what kind of came into the picture after the study took place.

[00:11:05] So for the U of A, for example, we had already had an emergency housing program, whereas NSCC didn't, but they've now implemented emergency housing. So I think that would be the biggest difference regionally. But for the students themselves, their experiences were very general and similar across the board.

[00:11:22] Karine Morin: How were those students identified? Where do we find the unhoused students when we look around a campus or even looking at a classroom? How were you able to identify them and invite them into this project? How did you approach reaching out to those students and getting them to speak with you for these interviews?

[00:11:40] Emily Berg: Yeah, so recruitment looks very different, 'cause obviously this is a very precarious and systemically structurally vulnerable group. And to identify them on an institution is very difficult.  

[00:11:52] Student homelessness does not look like literal homelessness, they aren't camping out on quad, that's not how they're practicing their homelessness, for lack of a better word, they're sleeping in 24-hour buildings, they're sleeping in their cars, they're couch surfing.  

[00:12:04] And so in order to recruit them, we did a bunch of different things. So one of the main things we did was we reached out to a bunch of student groups. I think I reached out to every single student group or association on campus, and we just had a poster, we had a newsletter blurb, and we were lucky enough that most student groups wanted to share that for us, as well as we just hung up posters around campus in really obvious buildings like Students Union building or any thorough ways where the transit would come through or bus stations on campus.

[00:12:34] And that's what they did across the board. So same with NSCC and other institutions, they would send out email blasts, so we had like a students digest or like a students email Listserv that we would also send out like our little blurb of, "If you want to participate, please feel free to."  

[00:12:50] So students themselves had to reach out, and that was a big step and we knew that would maybe reduce our numbers or be a barrier for some campuses, and that was true because U of A and NSCC seemed to have an easier time at recruiting and why maybe we made up the bulk instead of some other institutions where maybe they were smaller, there was a lot more stigma.

[00:13:11] If they reached out, they could maybe be identified through participating in the research. Whereas for us, and again, and NSCC, like for U of A, we have about, I think, almost 50,000 students on campus. So for 20 students to participate, it's very hard for someone to identify them, whereas University of New Brunswick, St. John campus, like that's a very much a smaller campus, so maybe they would be more identifiable.  

[00:13:36] But that's kind of our main like recruitment strategies, and then it was up to the students on if they wanted to talk or not

[00:13:42] Karine Morin: Emily, it's interesting that what you're depicting obviously is people who are not revealing their situation, and we have to expect that they worry about being stigmatized and negative repercussions for their situation.

[00:13:59] So what is the barrier - we're going to say probably stigma - but why is it a barrier for students to sort of reach out to see if there are services? I mean, campuses have accommodations, there are residences.  

[00:14:10] So, what can you help us understand about the student that does not quite know how to look for or doesn't want to be looking for that support, has already got some financial aid or what are the barriers to trying to come forward looking for a solution or for institutions to be offering solutions if they are becoming aware of this problem?

[00:14:32] Emily Berg: I think the biggest barrier, especially from students, that we found was lack of awareness. Again, for us, we have an emergency housing program, we have emergency bursaries, there's a lot of supports available if you reach out.  

[00:14:46] And so making those visible and making more students aware that they can access them, I think, is really important for institutions to do. But the second barrier was that when students did reach out, either they reached out to a faculty or another kind of staff member who wasn't aware of the services that existed, so you work at an institution, and even those who are employed don't know what's available, or they would have to reach out to seven different people in order to access financial aid, and then they'd have to go talk to someone else for mental health services, and then they'd talk to someone else for emergency bursaries, and then they'd talk to someone else for housing.

[00:15:21] So it was all of these hands that would have to touch them in order for them to actually be caught. And having to tell your story as a post-secondary student once is difficult enough, especially when you say the word homeless because, again, we don't think of a post-secondary student couch surfing as someone we would declare as homeless.

[00:15:40] And so for a student to go up to someone and be like, "Hey, I'm homeless," you don't jump to, oh, maybe they have, like, temporary housing, or maybe they're currently couch surfing, or maybe they're staying in their car. You think, "Oh, my gosh. This student is sleeping rough." Like, "Well, how did we let this happen?"

[00:15:55] And it builds that stigma already when kind of that service person is on alert instead of being like, "Okay, let's talk about this. Let's, you know, attack this from a really calm area. I'll be your one person you have to tell this to, and then I can go coordinate all the services." So that's a really big barrier is because students have to tell their story over and over.

[00:16:14] And in the interviews, they would admit to me that this was the first time they had told anyone or felt comfortable telling someone about their situation, and so we just don't make it easy enough for students to feel safe and comfortable if they have to tell multiple people the same story for maybe nothing to happen.

[00:16:32] There's also a lot of red tape with resources, and so maybe they don't qualify, and maybe they check all six boxes, but that seventh final box they don't check, so they don't get it, and they've had to go through this entire process in order to be met with a rejection, which is really, really difficult when you're already struggling with so many other things.

[00:16:50] Karine Morin: So, you do these interviews, you get to understand what students are facing, and so the project goes on to develop, I think, what you've described as toolkits, how to act, how to take action.  

[00:17:03] So can you explain a little bit what is offered in that toolkit, and what are the means that institutions or others can take to help address the situation for those who are experiencing homelessness while being a student?

[00:17:17] Emily Berg: Yeah, I'll keep it brief, cause the toolkits are very exhaustive, but we do have a big report if somebody wants to read all the nitty-gritty details. But basically there were, like, four prongs of the toolkit.  

[00:17:27] The first prong, I think was pretty obvious, is identify your problem. If post-secondary institutions, and again, like I said, experiences are very similar, but the size, the amount of students that maybe are struggling, the amount of resources you need at one campus versus another campus in the country could be different.

[00:17:44] And so you need to figure out how big your problem is, how many students are actually struggling, and what resources are the biggest priority. And in order to do that, you'd have to ask your students.  

[00:17:55] And so, for the U of A, every year now they send out a survey assessing precarity, both food insecurity, housing precarity, financial instability, to try and assess, okay, what are our areas of concern and where do we need to allot more funding or create more resources so that students aren't really struggling with this as much. So that’s a big one, first one, identify the problem.

[00:18:17] Second one is to create a training or resource protocol for staff. And so again, like I said, sometimes students would go to staff or faculty, and they would have no idea of the resources available. So we need to be able to kind of power these staff to have answers instead of just, "Hey, I'll check back with you later."

[00:18:36] The other biggest one was mental health supports, and so this was kind of single arm prong because students who are struggling with homelessness are not in silos of that's their only problem. If they're struggling with homelessness, they're more often struggling with food insecurity, financial instability.

[00:18:52] And if they're at a post-secondary institution, the main reason for that is to get a degree. But if I'm worried about my next meal and a roof over my head and where I'm going to sleep, I'm not really worried about my chem test the next day or my language arts paper or anything like that.  

[00:19:06] And so we really need to help their mental health and provide more resources, cause in most cases, they can only go to a mental health therapist once a month that's funded through the institution, and that's generous. So really bulking up these resources and having more staff was important.

[00:19:24] And finally, housing. Obviously, that one's probably pretty straightforward, but having emergency housing programs, having subsidized housing options. MacEwan University here in Edmonton offers low or subsidized housing for those who need it when they have empty spaces in their residence.

[00:19:41] So instead of leaving a room sit empty, they will rent it out at a lower cost. And so why can't we apply this across the board, across the country? And so housing was a big one and trying to figure out how you could implement emergency housing and how maybe you could implement maybe lower subsidized cost housing.

[00:19:59] Karine Morin: It's quite comprehensive and can obviously make quite a difference. But I come back a little bit so that you can elaborate on it, you said that for a lot of students, the whole sort of having to tell the story, the burden of explaining everything and trying to maybe justify or trying to advocate for oneself itself takes a toll, and how important it is that someone might be able to hear the story once and then carry it forward as a single point of advocacy, I think maybe is a term that you've used.

[00:20:30] Can you say if you've seen it implemented and if you've seen that it can really reduce the burden for the student and resolve more quickly? How is that perhaps playing out? Have you had a chance to observe how that's playing out, or how do you hope it might play out?

[00:20:46] Emily Berg: Yeah, so one of our partner institutions, Red Deer, Dr. Kirsta Roboson was kind of the co-investigator at that site, and they did this, and so they culminated their support into one kind of student services office.  

[00:20:59] And then from that office, you would meet with one select advisor was the person you would speak to, and then they would go in the background and coordinate all the other supports.

[00:21:10] And so you may still have to, again, if you're getting mental health support, obviously you have to go then speak to a therapist, like, you can't only speak to one person and then get all that support. But they wouldn't have to go talk to financial services, and they wouldn't have to go talk to housing or residences, and they wouldn't have to talk to all these different people.

[00:21:25] They would just have to talk to one person, which made it a lot easier for students to both access services, because when you can talk to one person who knows what's available, that makes it a lot easier to facilitate and give the students the resources, and it also helps the students only have to share their story once.

[00:21:42] And so it has definitely created a really big impact at Red Deer. We have some similar of trying to reduce red tape at the U of A and other institutions that were part of the study. But I think for bigger institutions, it's a challenge because all of these resources are already siloed and there's a lot more staff in these areas, and it's very hard to create a central student resources hub when you have so many students and so many resources and just, like, so many people to facilitate.

[00:22:08] But I do think we could still do a better job at maybe, again, maybe it's not one person, but maybe it's two people. We can split housing and financial aid into one and mental health and food into another. So we can still make smaller changes, maybe just not the big idealized of everyone's a circle and you only have to speak to the middle person kind of thing.

[00:22:27] Karine Morin: Overall, it seems like this project really did establish - it facilitated some relationships, some networks, some partnerships within institutions, and that that platform actually covers quite a bit of ground.

[00:22:40] It seems like you might have been in touch, of course, with institutions, but also with other community organizations and housing support organizations, this across the different provinces.  

[00:22:50] So all of this seems to be veering away from the research question into real action and real impact. How would you explain that sort of became the project and took shape, and that the outputs are advocacy, that the outputs are relationship with organizations across campus and beyond campus, beyond the research question, the making things happen and convening and resolving?

[00:23:18] Speak a little bit to research that becomes very much problem-solving and that has that real impact.

[00:23:23] Emily Berg: Yeah. I think for me, obviously coming from a STEM background, and I was, again, behind a microscope looking at very minute molecules and very much, again, lab-based work, that I was really struggling with that aspect of, yes, I'm doing research, and yes, it might help someone figure out another problem down the line, but what is my impact today?

[00:23:43] And I think that's really why I switched gears and, again, am now in very much public health, public policy, like impact roles, because I do think that research is very important. Obviously, I wouldn't be doing my PhD if I didn't love research, but I also think that it needs to be able to move, and it needs to be actionable, and that's very much what this project did.

[00:24:02] We heard stories, we still did qualitative interviews, we very much followed similar research protocols, had ethics, but then we wanted to move that research, and we didn't have to use those stories specifically, like, we didn't have to feel like we were extractive of, "Okay, we're going to take this person's story, and it's going to make this change," but we could use the lessons learned from the stories that were shared from us to share them at focus groups, which had community in the room, which had policymakers in the room, which had students in the room, which had all of these people in one area to talk about a problem and see what was actually attainable.

[00:24:37] I think the other thing with research is we always have our next steps or future directions. I know there's a chapter in my thesis on that, and we make these big, lofty ideas, but I think for this research specifically, we were very much, "Okay, what is attainable, and what are the things that we can change now?"

[00:24:52] And then maybe what are the things, the big picture things we could change later once these smaller pieces have been put in place. And so I really enjoyed, again, every part of working with this team, and I think that was the pro also of having a national research project is yes, it was challenging, and it was very difficult to coordinate all these different minds and different ways of thinking.

[00:25:13] Again, I was still the odd STEM girl in this realm of social sciences and humanities. But that also helped us facilitate and framework what we were learning in a way that was tangible for everyone.  

[00:25:25] The way that some people speak about research too sometimes can be really hard for a public or a layperson to understand, and so I think that was also a really important aspect of this research is that it's not this big picture research that's only touchable by academics.

[00:25:40] It was research that you could put a face to, put a name to, and then put an action to. And I think that's honestly what we need to shift our thinking about sometimes with research is that these are people, every data point is a person, every story we capture is a person, and how can we help change so that we don't have more people like this that are struggling with all these other different problems, whether it be chronic illnesses, incarceration, like whatever we're looking at across the spectrum of science to social sciences, there is a problem and how can we actually fix it or mitigate the impacts of it?

[00:26:13] Karine Morin: How would you weigh the gratification of that impact and of the academic recognition? How do you weigh that?

[00:26:24] Emily Berg: I weigh the community impact heavier at this point, and I think that also comes from my background too, being a crisis responder and seeing that kind of immediate shift in people and being able to help them in that minute, in that day.

[00:26:36] And I still do very much community-engaged research. My project is in community with community. I go to community centers like two days every week now for my research project. So I very much enjoy that aspect of being able to put a face behind the name or the data point and seeing that this impact can make a difference.

[00:26:55] But I also do love being able to share it with academic minds because I think that also allows a venue for this research to be continued, even if I'm not necessarily continuing that specific subset of research.  

[00:27:08] Or my PI, Eric, isn't continuing this specific chapter. Like, I think it allows people to use bits and pieces; like, people are asking us at a conference or the Summit, "Oh, how did you connect with community?" Or, "How did you connect these organizations?" Or, "How did you run your focus group?"  

[00:27:23] And so in sharing that knowledge with other academics, we can maybe create this less of a siloed type of research paradigm of everyone's in their own lane to, "No, let's share what's working so that more research can work in this way and make those impacts," rather than, again, I alone would never have been able to do this without all the partners that I ended up being able to chat to, all the colleagues I ended up having.

[00:27:49] And so I think that's a very important aspect of the academic channel that is still gratifying. But I think going to community and having them hug me and cry at the end and just be very... Yeah, I think that will always have a greater impact because it's a human in front of me rather than me waiting two years for an academic publication to be put forth, so.

[00:28:10] Karine Morin: If some students who are still at their master's level are hearing your story and going, "Yes, how can my research be of that type and have that impact?" What is the advice that you might provide to make sure that if they're seeking that opportunity, they go and find it and run with it?

[00:28:29] Emily Berg: I think I was, again, I was very lucky in where I ended up, but I think it's really looking for projects that align with what you want to do. If this was a project in an area that I maybe wasn't as passionate for, that I maybe didn't have shared experiences with, that maybe all of my previous experiences didn't align to, I wouldn't have had the same kind of passion; I wouldn't have had the same resilience.  

[00:28:52] I mean, this project's now been going on for four years; it's a very long project. And so I think really focusing on what do you enjoy, what do you want to do, and where do you want to do it, and who, I think, is the most important thing: who do you want to do it with?  

[00:29:07] I think being very picky about the groups that you want to work with, the community organizations that you want to work with, but also the teams that you want to work with. My supervisors have been amazing, but the teams have also been amazing.  

[00:29:19] You have to be able to find a team, and that can be very hard to do on the offset cause you don't know them, but reach out. Have coffee chats, be able to talk. And even with community organizations, just go chat with them, go stop in for outreach, go stop in for just general days so you can get to know them.

[00:29:36] And that also helps make your relationships stronger and easier to facilitate in the future because you've been there. You're also now a face to them instead of just a name in their email box, "Hey, I'm doing this research study." Go chat with them, I think.

[00:29:52] Karine Morin: Wonderful. I've had some such chats in my career, and I know that I've always really benefited. We've covered quite a bit, but if you had one last thought that you'd want to share with all of the audience that will listen to this podcast, what would you like them to remember about your work, your project, and the situation that some students are facing regarding homelessness? What's your last thought for our audience?

[00:30:17] Emily Berg: I think my last kind of thought and message I would share is to talk about it. I think especially at all levels- student level, faculty level, outside, when you're with your family, friends- just talk about it because you never know what someone can be going through.

[00:30:32] And I've had people in my life and in my circle that have come to me after being able to talk about this research and be like, "Yeah, I struggled with that. Like, I couch surfed. I slept in my car for a couple weeks." And it doesn't need to be this chronic thing for it to still be a problem.  

[00:30:48] So I think leaving space and talking about it will reduce that stigma and also make people feel comfortable to come chat and try and find solutions and try and find even a safe place to just listen.

[00:31:02] And so I think that's the biggest takeaway I always say is just can we keep talking about it, and then maybe students would be way more comfortable coming forward and finding help rather than sitting alone and struggling.

[00:31:14] Karine Morin: Well, I'm glad we've had this podcast together. Thank you so much, Emily.

[00:31:18] Emily Berg: Thank you.

[00:31:23] Karine Morin: Thank you for listening, and thank you to my guest, Emily Berg, PhD student at the University of Alberta. I also want to thank our friends and partners at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, whose support helps make this podcast possible. 

[00:31:39] Finally, thank you to Cited Media for their support in producing the Big Thinking podcast. New episodes are released each month, so be sure to follow us on your favourite podcast platform. À la prochaine.