Team

Laurie Guimond is a tenured professor in the Department of Geography at UQAM. The dynamics of settlement, cohabitation, mobility, migration and inhabitation in northern and rural environments are at the heart of her research, teaching and community services. She develops research, training and knowledge mobilization activities by adopting participatory and collaborative approaches with other researchers, students, practitioners, artists, creators, and technopedagogues. 

She is affiliated with the following research centers:  

Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome Campus), Adjunct Research Fellow 
Center for Research on Social Innovations (CRISE) 
Centre de recherche sur le développement territorial (CRDT)  
Centre interuniversitaire de recherche d’études et de recherches autochtones (CIÉRA)  
Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les affirmations autochtones contemporaines (GRIAAC, UQAM)  
Institut Nordique du Québec (INQ)  
Institut des sciences de l’environnement (ISE, UQAM) 

Maude holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from UQAM, where she studied waste management in northern and remote areas of Quebec. The call of the North then led her to become involved in the project Living Daily with Climate Change on the Lower North Shore Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow as a research professional with the Canada Research Chair With Living Environments of the North. This project, conducted in partnership with the Golfe-du-Saint-Laurent RCM and the Innu communities of Unamen Shipu and Pakua Shipi, aims to document the extent to which climate change is transforming the living environment in terms of travel and access to essential services. 

Her love of northern territories and her keen interest in intercultural cohabitation between indigenous and non-indigenous communities has now led her to become the Chair’s research coordinator.   

As a doctoral student, Florent is working on ecological community living in rural areas, both in Quebec and in France. Using a mixed methods approach, he is interested in the political ideas and practices promoted by these alternative projects and by some organizations aiming at federating such projects. He does so by examining them through different spatialities, and by looking at their interactions with public and para-public actors.

Lover of territories, Caroline enjoys discovering the dynamics and stories of the communities and people who inhabit them. Trained in Techniques du milieu naturel at the Cégep de Saint-Félicien and holding a Master’s degree in Études et interventions régionales at UQAC, she has been coordinating the Ateliers des savoirs partagés, a co-learning initiative between 15 rural communities and as many researchers from eight Quebec universities since 2012. She is also the mother of two wonderful human beings whom she accompanies as best she can in these troubled times.   

As a doctoral student in geography at UQAM, she is interested in the concept of bioregion and territorial autonomy. Linked to the need to re-anchor oneself somewhere, to rebuild living environments on bases other than colonialism, extractivism and capitalism, bioregions testify to both an existing biophysical reality and a current or future fight, which can take the form of a concrete utopia for reinventing sustainable territorial living environments and ways of life. 

By superimposing the various analytical grids of the bioregion (geographical, topographical, climatic, fauna and flora distribution, etc., in addition to political and cultural aspects), Caroline wishes to explore and understand territorial dynamics, in an attempt to “come back to earth” and better inhabit the complexity of rural territories.  

Étienne has always been fascinated by rivers and their importance to Quebec’s landscapes and cultures. He completed his Master’s degree in Geography at the Université du Québec à Rimouski in 2024, which focused on the social, economic and political components of river restoration. This project led him to take a general interest in the roles of societies in river transformations, through the prism of socio-geomorphology. His doctoral project focuses on the interactions between the Saint-Augustin-Pakua Shipu River and the communities living there as they evolve together. It aims to explore ways of characterizing these interactions through history, by crossing concepts and methods borrowed from physical, social and cultural geography. By delving deeper into the transformations that the communities of Pakuashipi and Saint-Augustin are experiencing and observing on the river, this project carried out with them will help guide their adaptation to these environmental changes. Equally passionate about teaching, Étienne is taking advantage of his studies to develop his knowledge-sharing skills, particularly in an intercultural context. 

Funding: Doctoral Research Scholarship, Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (2024-2028) 

Élia Auer’s research interests focus on wetland ecology and territorial relationships. Her Master’s essay is entitled Menaces anthropiques sur les tourbières : étude de cas au Centre-du-Québec. In the summer of 2024, she completed a Master’s internship with the Recherche et applications pour une restauration éclairée des milieux humides project (projet RARE).

Passionate about biology and the environment, Nicolas Bastien-Porlier completed a Bachelor’s degree in biology through problem-based learning at UQAM. During his Bachelor’s degree, he had the opportunity to work on biological control in strawberry cultivation at the Centre de recherche en agronomie de Mirabel, as well as on the detoxification mechanisms of various aquatic organisms exposed to certain trace elements. He also has a particular interest in scientific vulgarization and democratization, an interest he can cultivate in his work as an animator at the Biodôme. 

For his master’s degree, the aim of his research is to report on the Baie-des-Chaleurs participatory governance and climate resilience project that was rolled out in this region between 2019 and 2023, while investigating how the perspectives of the more vulnerable populations to climate change can be integrated into such an adaptation project.

Louis Boivin, a keen student in the Department of Geography at the Université du Québec à Montréal, is working on a Master’s project entitled Au cœur du Lac: la relation affective découlant de l’expérience habitante. With a passion for his home region of Lac-Saint-Jean, he is exploring the affective ties that the region’s inhabitants feel to the lake and its shores, through their experiences of its evolution over time. Louis is also a member of GeoLAS: Geomatics and Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory.

Coming. 

Laurence Larocque-Labossière is a Master’s candidate in the Department of Geography at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has also completed a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Modern Languages at Université Laval. Her academic career has been marked by a strong interest in the dynamics of transforming living environments, particularly in rural contexts. Her dissertation, focused on Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, explores the recomposition of inhabitation through tourist mobilities, both material and immaterial. She is also interested in photo-elicitation, which she uses as a visual method for collecting data. In addition, her experiences abroad have been influential in awakening her critical thinking, particularly in regards of tourism issues. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic played a key role in reorienting her interest towards Quebec’s territorial dynamics. Her thinking is also nourished by various professional research experiences carried out by her director and co-director.

Camille Massy-Raoult holds a Bachelor’s degree in high school teaching of social sciences from the Université du Québec à Montréal and has always been motivated by a deep curiosity and sincere commitment in all the environments in which she has evolved. Developing a keen interest in northern realities while working in an Inuit community, her journey has also taken her to Switzerland and Tanzania for teaching internships. These international stays have enriched her understanding of educational systems and cultural dynamics. She is also contributing to a project of the Chair on the effects of climate change on the Lower North Shore. These experiences have awakened in her a deep desire to help the “Other” and to explore human realities from different angles. Her Master’s degree in geography will enable her to explore these issues in greater depth and give back to her community.

Andréanne Ménard (Andy Maple) began her academic career in the visual arts, exploring how cultural devices—from language to pictorial framing—shape our relationship to the living world. Her love of traditional craft practices, whose reciprocity with matter eludes the nature-culture duality, led her to extend her artistic reflections to new disciplines. She chose to undertake a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences, where she got involved in a project with the Canada Research Chair With Living Environments of the North. Her thesis examines the impact of climate change on the social and cultural dimensions of snowmobiling on the Lower North Shore, a region of Quebec isolated by the absence of road access. In parallel with her academic career, she works as an editor for Pièce jointe, a contemporary art publishing house, and as a cultural worker on various collaborative projects.

Sonia Mercier is interested in contemporary relations between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous and more specifically in the factors that encourage encounters, convergence and living-together in a context of settlement colonialism.  

Driven by a desire to learn, she has completed a certificate in Social Sciences, a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Doctorate in Psychology, a Doctorate in Sociology and a short program in Indigenous Studies at UQAM. The courses she took as part of this program raised her awareness on issues concerning indigenous people and the need for action. She is now pursuing a Master’s degree in Human Geography, with the aim of broadening her angles of analysis and better understanding the conditions that foster respectful, harmonious and enriching intercultural cohabitation between indigenous and non-indigenous people.

Mathilde holds a Bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from the Université de Montréal, and is now a master’s candidate at UQAM’s Department of Geography. She is particularly interested in large landscapes and the importance of the communities that inhabit them. Guided by an interest in collaborative learning and the exchange of knowledge between actors and actrices in a given environment, she pays particular attention to the lived experience of local people. Her first encounter with the Côte-Nord region in 2022 was a defining moment in her career, leading her to study intercultural relations and the different dynamics shaping this territory, as part of her Master’s degree.

Originally from the Greater Montreal region, Marie-Ève has a passion for history, geography and wildlife. In Cegep, she decided to pursue her studies in music and social sciences. She then went on to UQAM to complete a Bachelor’s degree in high school teaching of social sciences. Having been involved in the first edition of UQAM’s Witamawi Summer School (2022), and having developed a growing interest for the territory and ethnobotany, Marie-Ève begins graduate studies, while teaching part-time on the South Shore of Montreal.   

Marie-Ève questions the ways in which history and geography are taught, as well as the knowledge and events promoted in curricula. Her research and development project focuses on the valorization of knowledge about flora in the teaching of social sciences. She wants to develop a teaching-learning activity that uses Land-Based education principles to decolonize teaching practices by enabling learners to learn more about the territory they share with First Nations. 

Thierry Pardo has long been interested in indigenous questions. His research project proposes to identify literary invariants between the writings of some historical geographers identified as libertarians and the Innu literature. The aim is to establish the linguistic familiarities of these two literatures, and to see to what extent such familiarities can enhance the current dialogue between contemporary geographers and indigenous cultures.  

An environmental educator, Thierry Pardo (Ph.D. Ed) worked for 4 years (2007-2011) as a research assistant at the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Education under the direction of Lucie Sauvé. In addition to his affiliation with the Canada Research Chair With Living Environments of the North, Thierry Pardo is a research associate at UQAM’s Centr’ERE and a member of the editorial board of the journal Éducation relative à l’environnement – Regards, recherches, réflexions.   

Click here to follow his literary activities.  

Valérie is a candidate for a professional Master’s degree in Geography. It’s her love of the outdoors and rivers that led her to study geography. Her fields of interest are intercultural relations between indigenous and non-indigenous populations and the resulting dynamics, the reality of climate change, as well as land claims. She is also interested in the principles of decolonization of research and the co-production of knowledge.

During her Master’s internship, she became involved in the project Inhabiting the Saint-Augustin-Pakua Shipu Sand River: Biogeomorphological, Social and Cultural Transformations, which examines the dynamics of habitation and use of the river in a context of erosion, silting and intercultural relations between the non-indigenous population of Saint-Augustin and the Innu population of Pakuashipi.