Study with me

I am affiliated with several graduate programs at Trent University including Cultural Studies (MA, PhD), Canadian Studies (MA, PhD), Interdisciplinary Social Research (PhD), and Sustainability Studies (MA). I am currently accepting new students. Applications are typically due December through February, depending on the program.

Below is a guide on how to best navigate graduate program admissions at Trent and how to contact a prospective advisor such as myself. These thoughts are somewhat particular to me and Canadian universities, but I hope they will also be a useful resource to prospective grad students more broadly.

I often send students who email me with incomplete information to this page for guidance on how to construct a better proposal. If that’s you, please read on. I’d be happy to hear from you again and this page will explain how to put your best foot forward.

I am open to advising grad students whose prospective thesis and dissertation projects overlap with my active areas of research. You can read more about these under Current Projects. I am also interested in advising work that will make use of my lab. I do not advise students whose research draws heavily on quantitative methods; it’s not an area of expertise for me.

It’s normal (and sort of expected) for prospective students to contact potential advisors over email before applying. Graduate admissions committees at Trent generally won’t admit students that don’t have a prospective supervisor interested in working with them (and they do check when students flag this in their application materials). So, please reach out to me if you think we would work well together so we can mutually explore our potential fit.

Students in the programs I advise in at Trent generally are responsible for developing their own projects; this is not something professors usually assign to them. Graduate admissions committees will need to see you articulate a plausible project when they evaluate your file. I also need to see this so I can assess whether or not I will be an effective advisor to you. This doesn’t need to be terribly detailed; just a few paragraphs over email will suffice at this point. Please be specific in outlining the research questions, particular case studies, and/or theoretical frameworks that are at the core of the research you want to do in your graduate degree. I want to hear what you want to study, with what tools, and why those questions are important to you and the world at large. You also aren’t obliged to stick with your proposed idea after you get admitted into a program. It’s normal for projects to shift (and even for advisors to change)—we just want to see that you can write a plausible proposal from the start.

Things to avoid: Please do not simply copy and paste the titles of a few of my papers, and/or some keywords about my research and leave it at that. This tells me more about your ability to skim websites that it does your familiarity with my research/fields of study. I really do want to hear what specific sorts of overlap you see between our scholarly interests and why you think I’d be a particularly good fit for the thesis/dissertation you really want to write. Also, I don’t need to see your transcripts/letters of recommendation/English scores/CV—no need to attach those.

Grad admission committees want pretty much the same pitch I outlined above, plus a few other details. They’re looking for basic aptitudes (can you read and write at an advanced level in English?), grades (more recent years will matter more than your sophomore GPA), and recommendation letters (do you have professors who can vouch to your scholarly skills and commitment, in enthusiastic terms?). They also want to see you explain why your project fits in the discipline/department you’re applying to (i.e. what makes this specifically a Cultural Studies project?). You can demonstrate this with a few lines describing core theoretical questions and big scholars in the field that you want to engage in your project. Past publications/exhibitions/writing experiences are a plus, but not essential. It’s also good to mention specific resources at Trent (i.e. EMM Lab, the Centre for Aging & Society) or region (access to specific fieldsites, archives, or communities of study) that will uniquely benefit the project. They want you to identify at least one potential advisor, but it’s also good to mention a handful of faculty that would be good in a broader advising team (you’ll eventually have to pick committee members/second readers for your project, so it’s nice to be able to say from the beginning that you’re here for a scholarly community, not just 1 person). That said, the most important thing by far remains the graduate research project you’re pitching. The committee wants to get excited about all the cool research that their students will do, and all the ways we’re a good fit for you, and vice versa.

Things to avoid: Mentioning non-academic employment on your CV, extensive paragraphs about your love of learning and commitment to scholarly life, and your future interest in working in Canada/achieving a particular visa status. These could all well be important motivating factors to your post-secondary pursuits, but they aren’t things that the committee can effectively evaluate across applications, and so they aren’t things that they will see as relevant.

Finally, it’s a simple thing, but bears repeating: don’t make copy/paste mistakes in your application materials. We all expect that students will apply to multiple universities and programs, modifying the same document each time, but if another school or program’s name gets left in, it’ll be a bad look. CTRL + F is your friend.

I regret that I don’t have the time to correspond extensively or video chat with prospective students beyond a brief compatibility check for your proposed research project. Email works best for my schedule (and my replies might be a little brief). I cannot mentor you on crafting an effective program of study/research proposal/graduate admissions application, so please see above for my general advice.

I am, however, happy to have a short video or phone call with students that have received an admissions offer and are weighing the advantages of coming to Trent vs. another program. You can count on me to be quite candid.

Honestly, Trent University’s School of Graduate Studies does not offer excellent funding packages. Most programs offer a very very modest scholarship and a graduate teaching assistanceship (aka, a job as a TA) for about $11,000-15,000 CAD a year. Tuition and fee waivers are rare, so you usually have to subtract this from the costs you pay to Trent for your studies, in addition to the costs of living in Peterborough (rents are high!). You might find it helpful to explore recent self-reported offers at the GradCafe.

Because our funding packages suck, and because it’s an important skill if you want to stay and build a career in academia, I strongly encourage students to apply for external scholarships and grants (especially the SSHRC, for the Canadians out there) throughout their graduate studies and even before they are admitted. You can find my grant writing tips here. I’m usually happy to write letters of support for prospective students (I always am for my current students). Grad programs at Trent do not ‘claw back’ funding when a student wins a scholarship, so it’s always more money in your pocket when you win one.

There may also be the opportunity for waged work during your degree. In addition to other student job opportunities on campus, I have my own research grants for my own research projects, and can sometimes hire students on as research assistants. This works like a part-time job (usually only for 5-10 hours/week, at $25 CAD/hour). Depending on the duration of the project or the grant funding, this may be a multi-year arrangement or a short term commitment.

Occasionally (when the grants are particularly good) I have the rare opportunity to offer a funded MA or PhD position. This works more like a salary, with the expectation that your thesis or dissertation will contribute to a wider grant project. For these positions I look for very specific qualifications and research interests. I currently do not have any funded opportunities to offer.

In general, I don’t know terribly much beyond this about the funding offers of various graduate programs. If you have a more specific query it would be best to contact the relevant graduate program director. You should be able to find their email on the program’s website.

It depends. I like to meet with admitted students early to discuss what kind of mentor-mentee relationship would work best for your career goals and personal communication style. I don’t presume that everyone wants to be the same kind of researcher, and is working from the same initial experiences and capacities. I appreciate it when students can arrive ready to tell me about themselves and how they work. I’ll try to do the same.

You can find some hints at my approach to learning and collaboration in EMM Lab’s Mission and Values Statements, which I co-authored with my PhD lab members.