Lisa Kowalchuk

Lisa Kowalchuk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph, affiliated with the College of Social & Applied Human Sciences. Her research focuses on social movements, gender justice in developing countries, and the impact of neoliberal policies on healthcare and labour conditions in Latin America. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on nurses’ labour conditions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, as well as land reform struggles and grassroots resistance to globalization.

Dr. Kowalchuk holds a PhD in Sociology from York University (2000), with prior academic positions at St. Mary’s University (Halifax) before joining Guelph in 2004. Her recent work includes a public sociology project on waste management in Toronto’s St. James Town neighbourhood, examining environmental justice through an ethnographic lens. She has supervised Master’s students in sociology and international development.

Her research outputs include peer-reviewed articles on health-care ethnography, nursing labour frameworks, and urban resilience, as well as edited volumes like We Resist: Defending the Common Good in Hostile Times (2020). She has contributed to policy-focused reports on teaching evaluations and pandemic responses in marginalized urban communities.