Rebeccah Nelems

My research has been shaped by 15+ years of managing and evaluating human rights, children’s rights, international and community development programs.

During this time, I became fascinated with the social contexts, processes and experiences that influence change in people, institutions, communities and societies. I am particularly interested in understanding the factors that foster and/or inhibit empathy within and across communities – specifically amongst youth – assuming that empathy is both a capacity that can be developed, and a necessary condition for social engagement.

Related interests include: conceptualizations of the ‘other’ and how these intersect with definitions of self and community (whether by geographical, national, ethnic, class, race, sexuality, gender, ability, identity or other lines); participatory research methods that promote bottom-up accountability and participant or community voice; youth engagement; institutional ethnography; and the study of empathy as it pertains to Verstehen and the practice of interpretive sociology.

I am also interested in institutional change/capacity building and knowledge management. I come to the PhD program in sociology at UVic with a master's in social and political thought from York University and a bachelor's in honours in philosophy and literary studies from the University of Toronto.