Episode Notes

Research interests

• Social inequality
• Poverty
• Youth homelessness
• Youth justice
• Child welfare
• Education
• Youth at risk
• Youth mental health
• Higher education
• Research impact and community-academic research collaborations

Selected Publications

Nichols, N. & McAuliffe, J. ( 2023). The Socio-Technical Organization of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Child Welfare. Journal of Public Child Welfare. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2024.2305422

Nichols, N. Crowell, K., Lenzner, M., & Bourns, J. (2023). Data justice for youth in and leaving care: Mapping the child welfare data landscape in Ontario. Information, Communication and Society.  https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2193245

Nichols, N. Malenfant, J. and the Youth Action Research Revolution Team (2023). The Social Organization of Pervasive Penality in the Lives of Young People Experiencing Homelessness. Critical Criminology https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-023-09717-5

Nichols, N. Malenfant, J. and the Youth Action Research Revolution Team: Adamovicz, L. Narcisse, S., Plamondon, M. & Watchhorn, M. (2023).  Youth as Truth-tellers and Rights-holders: Legal and Institutional Reforms to Enable Youth Housing Security International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 14(1): Special Issue: Youth Leaving Care. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18357//ijcyfs141202321288

Nichols, N. Malenfant, J. and the Youth Action Research Revolution Team: Adamovicz, L. Narcisse, S., Plamondon, M. & Watchhorn, M. (2022). Health System Access for Precariously Housed Youth. Society and Mental Health. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/21568693221082206

Nichols, N. & Guay, E. (2022). Ethnography, Tactical Responsivity and Communities of Inquiry. Contemporary Ethnography 51(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416211060870 

Learn about Naomi’s influences

• Gabor Maté (Canadian Physician)
• Karl Marx (Historical Materialist)
• David Harvey (British Geographer)
• George W. Smith (Ethnographer)
• Dorothy Smith (Institutional Ethnography)
• Gary Kinsman (Sociologist)
• Robyn Maynard (Professor of Black Feminisms)
• Beverly Bain & Min Sook Lee (Scholars’ Strike)

Learn about Naomi’s interests

• Peterborough Circus Classes
• Toronto School of Circus Arts
• Basic Economics 5th Edition (Open Textbook)
• New Amsterdam (tv show)

Transcript

Beth: Welcome to the Social Profs Podcast with your hosts Beth Torrens and Kristy Buccieri. This is the podcast where we attempt to turn teaching inside out by engaging in conversations outside the classroom with faculty, community members, and Trent student alumni. Our goals with these conversations are to learn more about the benefits of a criminology or sociology degree and to talk about the ways that students can get more involved at Trent and in the community. We will also do a deep dive with some Trent professors to learn more about their approaches to teaching, what drives their research, and a few fun facts you can only learn when you turn teaching inside out.

Kristy: On today’s episode we speak with Dr. Naomi Nichols, Canada research chair and associate professor in the department of sociology at Trent University. We explore the people who have influenced her thinking and shaped her work, why you might someday see her on a tightrope, and spirit of reinvention that comes with a career in academia. Thank you, Naomi, for joining us.

Naomi: It’s nice to be here.

Kristy: The first question we have for you is what is the one burning question that drives your research?

Naomi: um I had trouble with that one because I’m a bit promiscuous of my research questions and so I’m often coming up with new ones, feels like maybe too often coming up with new ones and often driven by things I’m seeing in the world or conversations that I’m having with often community partners or co-conspirators, I guess, who work locally in activist circles. But in general, I think my interest is the institutional, social, political, economic and technological drivers of inequality, like identifying what those are, and then further identifying how we can fought or overturn or resist those forces in our lives. And I named all those dimensions because of a podcast I really liked by David Harvey, where he talked about Marx’s interest in all of those things simultaneously. And I think that’s something that sociology offers, is our capacity to attend to those various dimensions and how the social infuses the and the political infuses the social and the technological and like to hold all that complexity. So, I wanted my question to also attend to that complexity.

Kristy: I really like your use of the language too, right? The promiscuous, the co-conspirator, thwarting. It all sounds very transgressive. And I think that’s really exciting in an academic setting where maybe we don’t always think about it in that way. So, I really appreciate that about your research agenda and approach.

Beth: It also sounds like your research highlights a lot of hot topics. So how do you handle teaching or sharing research findings about difficult topics?

Naomi: um, I will say I actually have less challenges having difficult, having conversations about hot topics with students than I do with community members sometimes, like local residents of Peterborough. So in my classes, when I talk about important social issues, for example, when I was teaching the social inequalities course to sociology undergrads, I often brought in the voices of people who’ve participated in research studies that I’ve led to let them talk from first voice sort of perspective about certain things that we’re exploring in class because I think it helps to ground those theoretical ideas and these um practical stories of everyday struggles to get needs met for example and in encounters with institutions or to just experience like fairness in their lives and that seems to be effective with students actually like more than me just talking about these things in the abstract actually here or read young people’s own words often as young people talking about particular social justice issues that we’re exploring. I also try to keep the focus on those dimensions that I talked about earlier. So, like the political, social, economic, institutional, technological drivers of inequality or social problem so that it’s not digressing to a conversation about problematic people doing bad things, but like the ways in which we all get caught up in participating in social relations that can be harmful and are often harmful to ourselves in ways we don’t identify right away and certainly are often harmful to specific groups of people. And so then rather than triggering what I would call like an ego response and people were like, hey, hey, that’s not me, I don’t do that. I’m not a bad person. Instead, we talk about how all of us are implicated in these sometimes-problematic social relations, often unequal social relations. And so that has been, I think, effective, too, in terms of just, like, not pushing people to feel and speak defensively about social issues that they may not have experienced directly and don’t want to think about themselves as implicated in but come to see that that might be true.

And then, and this is something I do in community as well, I try to listen rather than talk at people. I think as a professor I could default to talking at people a lot more. I like to lecture. And so I try to squash that tendency and actually just listen and try to see really where people are coming from and then use yes and statements like yes that is true yes your experience is this and this other thing is also true and both can be true at the same time and that’s hard to grapple with and maybe can be an unsettling place to find yourself uh but that is that’s where I try to bring people. So rather than convincing through rational arguments and statistics, just trying to listen, find some common ground, often like a values based common ground, we all believe in fairness. Well, let’s, you know, let’s start there. And then create like a little bridge to understanding that way. Yeah, without trying to be like, hubristic, like to think that I’m gonna be able to convince everyone to see things the way I do or to see things even the way the textbook sees things that sometimes you’re just trying to create a space of openness in people’s thinking.

Beth: That sounds like a great approach no matter what course you’re teaching, but what is your favorite lecture or topic to cover in one of your courses?

Naomi: Yeah, so I don’t actually teach that much these days. And primarily, I’m teaching PhD level research methods. And so, it’s not such a diff like it’s not a place where a lot of controversy happens. I mean, there can be some epistemic hierarchies that we have to note in class and like you know challenge a little bit but it’s not I don’t find myself also quite as like maybe passionate about some of the you know like there’s not like social issues then that we’re talking about that I’m also feeling really revved up about myself or like I have done a whole bunch of research on so the classes that I really like teaching or the lectures that I really like teaching when I am teaching in research methods are the ones where I’m talking about the research that I’ve done and less about research in abstract and less about things like feasibility or rigor in the abstract and more about like the ways that I’ve attempted to actualize those concepts in my own work. And initially that used to make me really nervous like having students read my work made me feel really vulnerable, but over time I’ve gotten more comfortable with that and I now, I really like it. And I like getting a chance to talk about all the things I’ve learned, all the things that haven’t worked out in research, like making that stuff really visible for students. So, none of it is surprising when it happens to them. And so, they don’t feel like, oh, you know, this person, they know I’m a Canada Research Chair, they might think that I always get it right. And like, oh, I’ve been rejected from so many things. And like, I’ve had a lot of, I’ve stumbled a lot over the years and so making those parts of the process also really transparent for students, I really appreciate.

Um, and then the other thing I love is at the end of courses there’s generally a culminating assignment that students share and so like that’s where I get to see I’ve been doing a lot of quiet work with them over the course of the semester but just giving them feedback back on their assignments, but to see it all come together in this like final presentation of their thinking that I love also. Like that’s probably my favorite day of the whole semester because they’re, especially at the doctoral level the students are really committed to their own education. So, they really have shifted often a lot. Like coming in with this like, I kind of like this and I’m thinking about that to like a very polished research design with a clear set of research objectives and questions and an articulation of why this methodology and not that methodology and why these theoretical resources and the ways that they’re hoping their research will contribute to social good. Like to hear that all come together is just really, really impactful. And I would say the same happens at the undergrad level when I’m not teaching a massive class. In the social policy class, they ended the semester by presenting on social policy issues and they were similarly impactful for me to listen to how they were able to frame the issue and compel each other and me of like the issues importance and importance as a social policy focus area for Canada. I really love hearing students share what they’ve learned.

Beth: And I’m sure the students find that to be a very valuable experience themselves, kind of looking back on things.

Naomi: And sharing with each other. Like I think what is most awesome about that is like, they look at what one another have done and they’re really inspired often. Sorry I cut you off.

Beth: That’s okay. Um, uh, just kind of a follow-up also, what do you think a favorite topic for students is in some of the courses that you have taught before?

Naomi: … [pause] I don’t know. I’ve never asked that question. And so, I am not sure. I know this past year, the students really loved that the week where we did actually look at different articles I had written about research for change, research for creating social change, and they found that to be really impactful, I think, because they all want their research to make a difference in the world. And they really came into the program with this aspiration not just to do research for research’s sake, but with some application of the findings to make things better in the world. And so that was like a particularly lovely night that I remember. And I actually interestingly that night they also had a choice they could read, or they could like listen. I had some recorded lectures that I’d done for other people’s classes, and they could listen to those as well. And I think having the multiple media was helpful in those classes too. Yeah, I do a lecture for the Bachelor of Arts and Science students on mental health and young people and that is like one that seems to resonate because it’s about young people in mental health and it’s like one of the articles they read is about getting access to mental health services as students on university campuses. So, it’s like directly relevant to their lives and that one always stirs a lot of conversation. But I’m not their teacher, I just come in and do this one lecture every year, so I don’t know if they like actually love it or if I just think they do. So, I’m sorry, I really don’t know what students’ favourite lecture is. And I’m teaching so little these days that I feel kind of out of the loop a bit.

Kristy: You know, it’s interesting, you said you love to lecture and yet when you speak about your teaching so much of it is discussion-based, so interesting to hear that sort of how you’re thinking about it and also how it’s coming out in your practice.

Naomi: Yeah, that’s true. I don’t actually love lecturing for like a very, very long time. I like talking with students. I will say though that that’s been a shift like going from graduate level teaching which is all I basically did at McGill to undergrad with that big class like and everyone’s so far from you. I really hate that. Like I really wish we could have more conversations especially because that course on social inequality is so important I think. Like it’s such a foundational course for sociology and I would like to have more opportunities to talk with students and I try in the big lecture to do like small group pairing and like think pair share kind of small group stuff and then medium-sized group and then the whole class and I feel like they’re rolling their eyes at me like they don’t actually want to necessarily talk in such a big room with you know it’s not set up for that it feels awkward.

Kristy: So, sociology after dark, it’s after the lecture, you’re having a dinner party. You can invite one academic, one celebrity, and two other people, whoever you want, politicians, activists, businesspeople. And we have said you can invite people who are living or who have passed. So, anyone throughout history, who would you invite and why?

Naomi: Yeah, I just did a really like, what’s my first response to this question? And it’s probably not politically wise of me to respond in this way, but I’m going to. I didn’t have all your characters. I really had this idea that I wanted to have Gabor Maté and Pierre Poilievre for dinner. And I wanted Gabor Maté, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him do this online, like in a podcast, but he challenges people’s assumptions that they have not experienced trauma. And he like gets them to work through their trauma in a public way. And it’s very revelatory. And I have the sense that Pierre Poilievre has a history of interesting experiences that have brought him to this place where… he is using, um, his political power to fear monger and stir up trouble and spread misinformation. and I would just love to see what that entailed, if the two of them were in a room and I could just watch and have him sort of like work with Gabor Maté and get to the roots of some of this political performance that we’re seeing today. My daughter just walked in [laughs]; do you hear her? Anyway, that was what I was thinking. And I, yes, I really would actually like to see that in action. But it’s not very sociological. It was more just like this. If I really could just bring some random interesting people, it would be the present leader of our Conservative Party and Gabor Maté.

Kristy: I’m adding another question, much to Beth’s surprise, but I have to know, what would you serve at the dinner?

Nami: Oh, that is a good question. I really like soup. Yeah, like maybe soup so that we have to sort of be like slow eating and careful and, you know, when Pierre Poilievre starts to cry and gets, you know, emotionally available that could just happen into the soup. Yeah, I really think it would be a fascinating conversation. Yeah, alternatively Gabor Maté and Donald Trump, but I’m not sure that’s even worth going there. But yes, I’m just, I’m so curious about the motivations and history of the political, like the particular type of politicking that we’re seeing right now. And I just don’t believe that reasonable, rational people like Pierre Poilievre have believed, I don’t believe he believes what he’s saying, like there’s no way that he, I think he’s smart enough that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. So, there’s something else motivating this performance. and I’m so curious about what that is in that generous, compassionate part of me, wonders if it’s trauma. Who knows? But I think if we’re much, I could figure it out.

[Music]

Beth:  So, the next series of questions that we have for you are a bit of a rapid-fire quiz. So again, say the first kind of thing that comes to mind. And it’s just a quick answer. You don’t have to elaborate on any of them.

[Music]

Beth: So, what is your favorite memory from when you were a student?

Naomi: Oh, yeah, I did have some of these, Dancing at the Commoner, which is a bar that used to exist on Trent campus that was in the woods, and it doesn’t exist anymore. It was right near the rowing club, Winning the head of the Trent when I was in my last year with my rowing team, and drinking beer from a frisbee. You could fit an entire pitcher of beer into a frisbee at the pigs ear.

Beth: That sounds like a very eventful undergraduate. What is your favorite thing to do on the weekend?

Naomi:  Um, I like to be outside. So garden, rake leaves, like do yard chores, go for walks. Often with a friend, I like to exercise, I like to move as much as possible because I sit so much during the week. So basically, anything that gets me moving and being outside.

Beth: What, or as an academic, what is something you can’t live without?

Naomi: my computer. Like, I am always nervous that something will happen to me, and it will be my computer that gets harmed in some way. Like, if I’m riding my bike and my computer is on my person, I never think like, oh, what could happen to my body if I fall off the bike? But I think, what if my computer dropped?

Beth: Is there a favorite TV show, podcast or movie that you have?

Naomi: Yep, I’ve been watching the new Amsterdam with my daughter, which I know I think came out a while ago, but I really love it for its illustration of the social determinants of health and that it like every single episode makes me sob. And I think that’s really helpful in like closing or alleviating stress, like just have a good big cry and not about something that’s going on in your life, like it’s external to me. It’s just like heartwarming stories about a vanguard director of medicine at a public hospital in New York City. I really, really love it.

Beth: What advice would you give your past student self?

Naomi: Well, as an undergrad, I was not very motivated as a student. I was really into rowing. I came to class, like I did my work, but I wasn’t a high achiever and I think maybe I should have tried a little harder as an undergrad. However, you know, those other experiences were also good and formative. And I tried hard when I got to grad school, so it all worked out in the end but I do think like maybe I could have had some different opportunities had I tried harder earlier. Um and then the other thing I would say is I didn’t do social sciences as an undergrad at all. I took one sociology class, and I would say you should do social sciences because I think that’s ultimately like the way my brain is wired is what I actually am passionate about and care about but I was training simultaneously to be a teacher and you couldn’t be a high school teacher at that time if you specialized in social sciences. So, I didn’t, but I think I would have liked to have done an undergrad in sociology and psychology actually. So yeah, I wish I actually still would like to do that degree.

Kristy: That’s interesting. That’s what my undergrad was, joint sociology and psychology.

Naomi: Yeah, well, see, yeah. Yeah, we ended up in the same place

Kristy: in the same place.

Naomi: But I feel like there’s some foundational bits and pieces that I’ve missed over the years. And I’ve had to like to teach myself things. And yeah, I would like I would have liked to have actually done an undergraduate degree in those things and then also done social statistics, because I did statistics as a biology student, but it seems like irrelevant to like anything I cared about.

Kristy:  If you could instantly have any skill, party trick, or talent, what would it be?

Naomi: In Montreal, a lot of people were involved in the circus. Well, like, I don’t know, you know, how much of the population, but enough that kids did circus training on the weekends. It was like normal to know people who had done circus-related activities. So, I would maybe like to do some kind of acrobatic circus stuff. It was common for people to do like acrobatic things on long pieces of silk or like trampoline and high wire. Anyway, I would like to do circus.

Kristy: Very cool. You sort of answered this but we’re gonna give you another opportunity to expand or reiterate. What course or subject did you not take as a student that you wish you could learn more about now?

Naomi: Yeah, okay so definitely social sciences economics. I wish I had taken courses in economics I’ve never taken any I think it would be helpful. And then social statistics, like a focus on uh yeah, I’ve even though like maybe when I do my sabbatical I should go back and do a uh like social statistics set of courses. I don’t really love math um but I was good at it and I should probably know more than I do so uh yeah those are the ones not for even for both like I don’t really love economics either but I just think we should to know more about it as sociologists, because we are always pointing to the political economy and to economic relations, like underpinning the social things we see. And I wish I had a better sense of what those actually entails. I found like Marx’s work on capital to be really illuminating in that way, because he kind of took things, market relations, and then like trace them back to the material world that we see and experience and allowed a person like me to connect the dots a little bit. But I would also like to be more fluent in that discipline.

Kristy: Who do you admire?

Naomi: Yeah, I admire. I took this question from an academic point of view. So, I admire academic people or people who, not academics even necessarily, people who combine or effectively marry their intellectual pursuits and their activism. And so, I was thinking like the first person in my life who inspired me in that way as my dad, actually. And he still does a ton of like both things, intellectual work, actually art and activism. And in a really just get to it kind of way, like he sees a problem. He’s like, I have some resources. I think I could solve this problem. I think this person would help and this person would help. And he brings them together and they solve the problem. And so, it’s like not a lot of fuss. there’s not a lot of performance about it. It’s actually not oriented really to like protest, or you know like big A activism. It’s very much like local problem solving to address social justice issues as they arise in the ways that he can and I think that is a disposition that I admire, and that I aspire to have myself, and so then I was thinking that there are other like scholar activists who inspire me when I was first starting out, some OG institutional ethnographers like George Smith and Dorothy Smith and Gary Kinsman, who really like used their scholarship to advance movement efforts or to advance, you know, just even small groups of people getting their needs met more effectively in whatever ways they needed. And then there are other like more contemporary scholar activists like Robin Maynard, who I think is pretty badass and admire, in part for her like lack of like she doesn’t bow down to the Academy. And I feel like I really did like I was so invested in getting a job as a and like, that was a really big deal to me. And when I kept getting rejected and not getting a job, I felt really like crushed as a human and unable to see a future for myself. And I am very inspired by people who do not think and act that way or feel that way in relation to the university. And so, the two other people who came to mind were Beverly Bain and Minh-Sook Lee. They organized, I believe, the first Canadian Scholars Strike. And I just thought, again, here’s like two people who went, and we should do something about anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. Let’s do this.” And they just, you know, organized a whole bunch of pedagogical and intellectual and solidarity building opportunities for people. And I really appreciated that effort on their part. So, it inspired me too.

Kristy: Cat, dog, fish, bird, or lizard?

Naomi: Mmm, dog. Even though I don’t want to own a dog, because they’re too much work, I do like dogs a lot.

Kristy: And if you weren’t working as an academic, what would you be doing?

Naomi: Well, I used to be a teacher. I used to be a high school teacher. So, you know, presumably, maybe I would be doing that although I think by now, I would have gotten bored. I get bored really easily, so I think that’s why I was so invested in becoming an academic is I felt like it was the only way that I would be able to like to reinvent myself every five years, which is sort of what I want. So, I’m not sure what I would be doing. I’d probably be doing research still, maybe as part of an NGO or something rather than in the university or I’d be a teacher.

Beth: Well, I think we’ve learned a lot about your interests and people that  who you admire and how you handle difficult or very complex topics in your classes. And, you know, in the spirit of reinventing yourself every few years, I think we’re very excited to see how you might reinvent yourself or what research projects you might take on in the future.

Naomi: Me too. TBD.

[Music]