Team

Claire Alvarez is a doctoral candidate. Her research focuses on conjugal relationships in a migratory context. Since 2020, she has been a research assistant at the Institut de recherche sur l’immigration et sur les pratiques interculturelles et inclusives (IRIPII), where she conducts action research on violence against women.

Umair has expertise in Sports for Development and Peace (SDP) and Violent Extremism prevention. He is a social activist and the founder of Kafka Welfare Organization Pakistan. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student at UQAM University Canada. He is exploring SDP and Violent Extremism prevention. He works as a research assistant for Project Someone, an initiative that raises awareness, creates spaces for pluralistic dialogues, and combats discrimination and online hate. He has been affiliated with the United Nations and Women Deliver Young Leaders programs. In addition, he has contributed to the Youth Expert group of the United Nations High-Level Meeting 2020 on Sports and PVE. Lastly, he is a board member of the UNESCO Task Force on Youth and Sport, a member of the UNESCO Chair in Curriculum Development at UQAM Canada, and a former faculty member of GC University Lahore, Pakistan. He is very passionate about changing the lives of young people through sports.

Jessie Beaudin is a master’s student at the Université de Sherbrooke’s School of Applied Politics in Public and International Policy – with internship. He has cultivated a growing interest in security issues, violent extremism and risk management. In a context where climate change remains a growing risk factor, he is focusing his directed work on misinformation and climate skepticism in Quebec under the direction of Professor Annie Chaloux.

Jessie Beier is currently a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University whose current research-creation practice experiments with developing ecological dissensus and heretical forms of pedagogy aimed at collective practices of negation, refusal and fabulation. Beier recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in the Department of Secondary Education with a SSHRC-funded project titled Pedagogy at the End of the World: Weird Pedagogies for Unthought Educational Futures.

Adib Bencherif is an adjunct professor at the School of Applied Politics at the University of Sherbrooke. He teaches courses in applied political science and courses on Africa and the Middle East. He is also a research associate at the Sahel Research Group of the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida, at the UNESCO-PREV Chair and at the Francopaix Center of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair at UQÀM. He obtained his PhD at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Sahel Research Group of the University of Florida (2019-2021). Her main research interests focus on security issues, identity issues, and political violence in North Africa and the Sahel. His research focuses on nomadic communities, specifically the Tuareg. An advocate of an applied social science approach, he provides training in political risk analysis and regularly participates in consulting activities to facilitate conflict analysis and resolution and the prevention of radicalization. He has published numerous scientific articles in French and English and co-edited a book on political risk analysis (PUM).

Karine Bolduc is currently Executive Secretary for the UNESCO-PREV Chair and for the School of Applied Politics of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Sherbrooke. She was a member of the Board of Directors at Baseball Sherbrooke as Director of Events & Communications for several years. She was able to bring her contributions in terms of leadership, organization and a great capacity for coordination within her team. Her association was even host of the 2017 provincial games and her event was nominated for the Mérite sportif de l’Estrie. She has won the Volunteer of the Year award several times, for Baseball Sherbrooke and Baseball Estrie, as well as at the provincial level. Ms. Bolduc was coordinator for the University of Sherbrooke’s 2012 Centraide campaign and raised an unprecedented amount of nearly $170,000 in funding. This dedication enabled her to win the volunteer award with Centraide twice. Very involved at the community level, Ms. Bolduc is above all a person of challenge and action.

Alessandra Bonci is a PhD candidate in political science at Laval University, under the supervision of Professor Francesco Cavatorta. She is currently preparing a thesis on the political engagement of radical pious women activists in Tunisia since 2011. She is interested in gender studies and politics in Tunisia and the MENA region. Alessandra has also worked on the secular-Islamist divide in Tunisia and the role of the Tunisian diaspora in France and Italy in the 2011 revolution. Among her works, she recently published a chapter of the book “Global Political Demography in the Maghreb Region” with Francesco Cavatorta. Alessandra also published the book chapter “The secular/Islamist divide in Tunisia: myth or reality?” entitled “The Arab Spring: microdynamics of activism and revolt between change and continuity”. In 2019, Alessandra published the review article “Salafi fuel for ISIS’ tanks? The ideological relationship between Salafism and the Islamic State” on the peer-reviewed journal Mediterranean Politics.

Josie-Ann Bonneau is the coordinator of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Transmission among First Peoples as a Dynamic of Well-Being and Empowerment. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology and a master’s degree in regional studies and interventions. During her studies, Josie-Ann adopted an intersectional approach to exploring issues related to the integration practices of Latin American women in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Professionally, she has also worked on the decolonization of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations, as well as on bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous people closer together through the promotion of Indigenous languages and cultures.

Annabelle Brault is a resource-oriented music therapist, musician, researcher and educator. A full-time music therapy lecturer at Concordia University, she is interested in the use of music technology as a creative medium to instill social change. Alongside her teaching, she works as a music therapist with youth and caregivers. Her research and activist interests include harnessing the emancipatory power of music, resource-oriented approaches, as well as the use of music technology and performance in education. Ms. Brault’s participation in the educational initiative ‘Landscape of Hope’, led by Prof. Vivek Venkatesh as part of Project SOMEONE, embodies all of these interests, as unique audiovisual performances are used to explore resilience in the digital age. As a professional musician using electronic music media, she collaborates with artists such as Justin Wright, Cedric Noel, Tambour, Landscape of Hate and arc.

Olivier Champagne-Poirier is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Sherbrooke. He co-founded the International Crisis & Risk Communication Association and serves on its board of directors. He is a member of the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire sur les risques et les crises (LIRiC) and the Laboratoire de recherche sur les publics de la culture (LRPC). He also serves on the scientific committees of the journal Climatoscope and the Jasmin Roy Sophie Desmarais Foundation. He specializes in qualitative research methods and is interested in various transdisciplinary issues, ranging from the socio-media impacts of crises (health, industrial, or environmental) to barriers to cultural democratization. His work has been published in collective works and national and international scholarly journals, such as the International Journal of Qualitative Method, Les Cahiers du Journalisme, Infodemic Disorder, Communicating Risk and Safety, Qualitative Health Research, and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.