Ann Marie Murnaghan

Ann Marie Murnaghan is an Associate Professor in the Children, Childhood, and Youth Program within the Department of Humanities at York University's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She serves as Co-Lead of the Children and Young People Interdisciplinary Research Network at the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and is a Faculty Affiliate at The City Institute, York University.

Dr. Murnaghan's research focuses on discourses of childhood, children's worlds and material cultures in cities, both historically and in contemporary contexts. Her expertise spans Children's Geographies, Urban Geography, Historical Geography, Children's Material Culture, Museum Studies, and Urban Political Ecology. Her previous research analyzed how playground material cultures influenced childhood discourses in early twentieth-century Toronto, while her current work examines museums as sites of children's informal education and identity formation using film studies, critical museology, and participatory methodologies.

Dr. Murnaghan's scholarly contributions demonstrate a consistent focus on children's urban experiences with particular attention to historical contexts, material culture, and educational spaces. Her recent publications reveal an evolving research trajectory increasingly incorporating film studies and participatory methodologies to explore children's relationships with nature, cities, and cultural institutions.

• Principal Investigator of SSHRC-funded project
• Co-edited 'Children, Nature, Cities' (Routledge 2016)
• Award-winning teacher committed to community-oriented education

Dr. Murnaghan earned her PhD in Human Geography from York University in 2010 after completing a BSc (Hons) at Queen's University and an MES at York University. She has held teaching positions at University of Manitoba and Ryerson University, and research fellowships at the Centre for Digital Humanities (Ryerson) and the Centre for Research in Young Peoples Texts and Cultures (University of Winnipeg).

As an active academic leader, Dr. Murnaghan has co-organized multiple sessions at major conferences including the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting and the Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. She previously served as International Liaison for the Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group and as Communications Coordinator for the Canadian Women and Geography Study Group.