Education

Emilie Isch, MA (SHE/HER)

Research Associate

Master of ARts in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (Urban and Regional Studies) (2022-2024)

University of British Columbia | Okanagan Campus | Sylix Okanagan Nation Territory

Research interests: Urban Studies, Storytelling, Community/ Social Planning, Architecture, Public Space, Placemaking, Feminist Praxis, Multimodality, Critical Theory and Politics, Environmental Studies, Biology, Indigenous Pedagogies

emilie isch currently resides on the unceded territory of the Syilx people. She is an interdisciplinary researcher, activist, and designer interested in multiple disciplines and mediums, from urban geography and political science to collaging and poetry. Through these interdisciplinary perspectives, she is well suited to identify and analyze a wide range of social issues and take a strong social planning approach to how we make sense of them. She is an MA graduate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program specializing in Urban and Regional Studies. Her thesis explored how public libraries serve as a model for responding to and addressing intersections of homelessness in small Canadian cities. She focused her fieldwork in Vernon and Nelson, British Columbia.

Her academic journey began at Carleton University, where she earned her Honours Bachelor’s in 2020, completing her undergraduate thesis titled: Meanings and Experiences of Space, Place, and Atmosphere on Campus: A Note for the Next Masterplan. Throughout her time at Carleton, she published two works, one based on an internship in Nepal with a women’s-owned craft business: “Culture, Craftwork and Globalization,” and another on “Palestine: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Middle East.”

emilie also holds a graduate certificate in Human Centered Design from Algonquin College, where she joined the Human Centered Design Lab in 2021, completing multiple client-driven design research projects. After her studies at Algonquin College, she worked at Nokia as a UX research co-op student and later joined two departments of the Canadian Government, where she contributed to ongoing projects in digital government and client experience.

University of British Columbia Okanagan, Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies, Master of Arts, and Teaching Assistant September 2022 –January 2025

Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology, School of Media & Design, Graduate Certificate in Human Centered Design September 2020 – August 2021

Carleton University, Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs, Honors Bachelor of Global and International Studies September 2016 – June 2020