Leah Levac

My research program focuses on the intersections between critical community engaged scholarship and public policy. I am interested in: 1) exploring how community engaged scholarship (CES) can become more critical and attentive to the knowledges and practices of often-invisible communities; 2) fostering innovations in public policymaking through critical CES; and 3) facilitating critical CES capacity-building.

I am involved with a number of collaborative projects that use intersectionality, deliberative democracy, anticolonialism and other theoretical ideas to consider how public policy making processes and outcomes can be more attentive to the experiences and knowledges of invisible and hyper-visible communities, and welcome students working in these areas.

Photo credit: Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation / Joana Bezeau | Photographe et vidéaste | Québec / Canada.

• Levac, L. & Chan, W.Y. (2025). Advancing the collaborative and democratic practices of policy innovation labs with community engaged scholarship. Policy Design & Practice.

• Levac, L., Pin, L., Buchnea, A., Malenfant, J. & Annan, J. (2025). A national housing strategy for whom? Possibilities and limits in Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) for a rights-based housing regime. International Journal of Housing Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2025.2484046

• Levac, L. & Gillis, J. (2025). Inclusive and participatory policymaking at the local level: Problems and possibilities. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 16(1).

• Fusco, L., Stinson, J., Levac, L. & Stienstra, D. (2025). Harnessing the Potential for a More Equitable Future in Newfoundland and Labrador: Applying Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) to Offshore Wind Development. Retrieved from https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p84343/160543E.pdf

• Malenfant, J., Annan, J., Pin, L., Levac, L. & Buchnea, A. (2024). Toward the right to housing in Canada: Lived experience, research, and promising practices for deep engagement. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v10i2.70850

• Levac, L., Chan, W.Y., Laban, S., McMahon, D., Coleman, A. & Pek, S. (2023). A Governance Framework for Advisory Committees of Council. Retrieved from https://www.cesinstitute.ca/governance-framework-advisory-committees-council

• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Project Team. (2023). An Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Analysis of Core District of Kitimat Policy Documents. Available online: https://liveworkwell.ca/sites/default/files/pageuploads/DOK_EDI_PolicyAnalysisReport_2023March_FINAL.pdf

• Deska-Gauthier, S., Levac, L., & Hanson, C. (2022). The political framing of actors in the Independent Assessment Process: Justice oversights. Journal of Canadian Studies, 56(1), 35-68.

• Levac, L., Cattapan, A., LeBlanc Haley, T., Pin, L., Tungohan, E., & Wiee, S.M. (2022). Transforming public policy with engaged scholarship: Better together. Policy & Politics, 50(3), 302-322.

• Manning, S., & Levac, L. (2022). The Canadian Impact Assessment Act and intersectional analysis: Exaggerated tensions, fierce resistance, little understanding. Canadian Public Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12458

• Manning, S., & Levac, L. (2022). Exaggerated tensions, fierce resistance, little understanding: The incorporation of gender-based analysis plus in Impact Assessment legislation. Canadian Public Administration, 65(2), 1-19.

• Levac, L., Stinson, J., Manning, S., & Stienstra, D. (2021). Expanding evidence and expertise in impact assessment: Informing Canadian public policy with the knowledges of invisible communities. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 39(3), 218-228.

• Levac, L., & Wiebe, S.M. (Eds.). (2020). Creating Spaces of Engagement: The Practical Craft of Deliberative Democracy. University of Toronto Press.

• Levac, L., McMurtry, L., Stienstra, D., Baikie, G., Hanson, C., & Mucina, D. (2018). Learning across Indigenous and western knowledge systems and intersectionality: Reconciling social science research approaches. SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis report. Available online at: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women

• Levac, L., & Worts, S. (2018). Invisible young women and public policy in Ontario. Canadian Public Policy, 44(1), 41-53.

Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science Early Researcher Award, 2017-2022.

University of New Brunswick, PhD Interdisciplinary Studies; Queen’s University, B.Ed