Amanda Buchnea

My name is Amanda Buchnea (she/her) and I’m a Doctoral Candidate starting my sixth and final year in the Social Practice and Transformational Change program at the University of Guelph. I am a white settler who grew up in the Haldemand Tract in so-called Kitchener. My ancestors were primarily farmers and working class families in Treaty #19 (Ajetance Purchase) and Treaty #29 (Huron Tract Purchase) territory, arriving from the UK and Ukraine. I am currently based in Tkaronto on Treaty #13, the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, living in Taiaiako’n, which are the ancestral lands of the Hunon-Wendat, Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and Chippewa. I live with my partner of 15 years and our two cats, Frankie and Gizmo, usually co-living with a family member or two! I love all forms of crafting, playing the violin, running, camping, going to concerts, and hosting/cooking for the people I love.

My research and practice have been focused on advancing housing justice through critical community-engaged policymaking and planning. I am completing my dissertation research project which critically examines the practice of community homelessness planning in Ontario and across so-called Canada in order to identify the ways in which young people are made (in)visible. This community-engaged project emerged out of a decade of working at the intersection of research, policy advocacy and practice in the field of youth homelessness prevention at A Way Home Canada, the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, and the Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab. I enter this field without lived experience of homelessness myself, but working in deep solidarity and a commitment to relationship with those who have lived/living experience and who are working to advance housing justice. Throughout my work in this space I have found so much affinity with abolitionist approaches that reject carceral systems of “care” for liberatory and restorative systems that invite us to stay in the struggle of being and building community and kinship. I believe in and hold onto a future in which everyone has safe and adequate housing to meet their changing needs and find belonging and community in the place they want to call home.

Prior to starting in the SOPR program I completed an Honours Bachelor of Social Development Studies (2015) at the University of Waterloo where I specialized in social policy and social work. I then completed a Master of Public Policy (2017) at the University of Toronto where I focused on community development and first connected with organizations working to prevent and address homelessness. I chose a PhD in the SOPR program because it aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of my praxis and provided the grounding frameworks for doing deeply community-engaged research and scholarship that advance social justice in all its forms. As I near the end of my degree requirements, I am so grateful for the friendship, community and mentorship I have found through the SOPR students, faculty and staff – they have greatly enriched my life and continue to challenge and expand my thinking around what it means to be a social justice-oriented scholar and human.