Connaught ‘PhDs for Public Impact’ Fellow

November 14, 2023

Congratulations to Madalyn Hay, a recipient of a 2023-2024 Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship.

Madalyn, one of our doctoral students, holds a BAH in Contemporary Studies and Classics from the University of King’s College, Halifax, and an MA in Political Theory from the University of Chicago.

Her doctoral research is on urban land use and the role that Community Land Trusts (CLTs) play in ensuring equitable, sustainable, and inclusive urban development. Her research investigates the social and political benefits that CLTs provide through subjecting land use to community based democratic governance. Her work also seeks to better understand collective forms of property ownership and how they challenge dominant paradigms of private property and neoliberal urbanism.

Though Madalyn mainly works within Political Theory, her research transcends narrow disciplinary boundaries, drawing on Comparative Politics, Human Geography, Urban Studies, and Legal Theory. Her method is largely inspired by Grounded Normative Theory which aims to produce theoretically robust and empirically informed frameworks to make sense of contemporary political practices.

The Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship Program is part of the core offerings of the Centre for Graduate Professional Development. Public impact scholarship, through the lens of higher education, is inquiry that makes meaningful contributions to the public. Public impact spans science and technological innovation, as well as cultural innovation, with the goal of social benefit. This covers all academic disciplines. With that in mind, fellows from PhDs for Public Impact program will focus on engaging the public through a scholarly agenda. This could involve a range of activities, from describing their work in a public forum to partnering with a school, community organization, or cultural institution in an ongoing two-way exchange of knowledge and practices.

For more information on this years recipients and to learn more about Madalyn’s research, visit the Centre for Graduate Professional Development’s website.