DEEP Impact Internship Program

Project Supervisor

Professor Emma Harden-Wolfson

Department of Integrated Studies in Education

Project Description

This research critically examines how higher education policies can more effectively support equity deserving groups amid global (geo)political shifts and inwards nationalistic turns that have already seen declining global commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). It explores policy mechanisms that expand access and promote student success, identifies implementation challenges and innovations, and highlights the intersectional experiences of marginalized students. The study aims to generate grounded, actionable knowledge that will inform more effective and inclusive higher education policy and support collective advocacy on the right to higher education. Designed in conjunction with UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America & the Caribbean (UNESCO IESALC), this project had two parts. The first was completed by a McBurney Community Fellow in summer 2025 and involved a global literature review of policies relating to the right to higher education that will be published by UNESCO in 2026. The second part focussed on higher education equity in Uruguay, where UNESCO IESALC has an office. This part of the research, which is the focus of the proposed DEEP Impact Internship, involved 10 interviews with government and academic stakeholders. Particular attention during data collection was paid to policy mechanisms for expanding access and ensuring student success, approaches to supporting equity deserving groups, implementation challenges and solutions in Uruguay and across the Latin America region, and innovative practices and emerging trends.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

This internship will focus particularly on knowledge mobilization and has two main deliverables. The first will be to produce two versions of a policy brief (one in English, one in Spanish) based on the interview data and related academic/grey literature. The policy briefs will be targeted at policymakers in Uruguay. The second deliverable will be to produce a report about higher education equity in Uruguay that includes recommendations for stakeholders in other settings based on what can be learned from the situation in Uruguay. The project could possibly include other smaller deliverables depending on the intern’s progress and availability e.g., a newspaper article for University World News. The intern will be credited as an author on all publications. Data collection for this project has been completed and the interviews have been translated and transcribed (most of the interviews were in Spanish). Initial data analysis has been conducted and should be completed by the start of the internship. The Principal Investigator (PI) Dr Emma Harden-Wolfson is currently working on writing up the findings for a journal article to be published in both English and Spanish. Depending on timing/availability, other tasks may include supporting the PI to complete the journal article/work on article revisions (depending on progress), translation from English to Spanish (this can be done with AI tools but requires human checking), further data analysis, identifying possible outlets for publication, communicating with interviewees in Uruguay to obtain their feedback on drafts, and potentially liaison with UNESCO IESALC. The PI is also willing to train the intern on research/transferable skills based on the intern’s areas of interest and future plans.

Project Team

The work is independent although the intern may need to be in communication with study participants in Uruguay and others (this would be by email). If the intern is interested in higher education research, they are welcome to join Dr. Harden-Wolfson's Higher Education Research Group which meets monthly.

Technical Skills

Required skills

• Ability to read, write and speak English and Spanish fluently
• At least some experience of technical writing (reports, policy briefs etc)
• At least some experience of knowledge mobilization or able to demonstrate a strong understanding of the principles of knowledge mobilization

Assets

• Project management skills
• Prior experience of policy research

Transferable Skills

Required Skills

• Excellent, clear written communication skills
• Proactive communicator
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail
• Excellent analytical and synthesis abilities
• Demonstrable interest in higher education equity
• Experience of working with adaptability e.g., in case parts of the project/deadlines change during the internship

Assets

• Knowledge of higher education in Uruguay or cognate Latin American contexts
• Familiarity with the social, historical, political (etc) context in Uruguay/Latin America

Supplemental Materials

Example of technical writing that showcases analytical skills and ability to write clearly and concisely. This can be in English or Spanish. This does not have to be a long piece of writing.

Project Supervisor

Professor Nik Luka

Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture | School of Urban Planning | Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires en études montréalaises

Project Description

The project explores how to enhance the Ville-Marie borough, and particularly the Peter-McGill district, as a family-friendly residential environment. Among our enduring preoccupations are housing (affordability, quality), childcare services, and schools, but also the everyday realities of navigating the city— especially for first-generation Canadians and households with modest incomes. In the shortterm, we are focusing on how different organisations can work in concert to ensure that families are well supported in the hypercentre of the metropolitan region so that they are inclined to stay and able to do so (financially, socially, and in terms of access to key services). The aim is a co-produced framework for guiding future actions and improving the quality of life for families in Montréal’s central-city neighbourhoods. Our project uses Participatory Action-Research (PAR) based on an egalitarian partnership where researchers and community members from diverse publics all share decisions, responsibilities, and knowledge at each stage of the process. Our approach integrates many kinds of knowledge—theoretical, practical, and lived—to place community actors as experts who can drive the research, rather than ‘objects of study’. For more information, please see https://www.mcgill.ca/centre-montreal/projects/families-city

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The intern will conduct collaborative work with community stakeholders to analyse the conditions, organisational mechanisms, and collaborative opportunities to develop local practices and strategies for families in the city. Specific tasks will include background research (assisting team with reviewing the state of the debate and grey literature), meetings with stakeholders in various civil-society and public organisations, helping to recruit participants for interviews and focus groups with local residents, supporting interviews and focus groups, analysis of results, and preparation of internal reports. A major deliverable will be codefined by the intern through discussion with the team members. This may take the form of an academic paper or a professional report.

Project Team

The student will work with the Table de quartier Peter-McGill (https://petermcgill.org/) and other local civil-society organisations who have partnered with members of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montréal. Work will comprise roughly equal amounts of time in collaboration with team members and independent work (desk research) for which space will be provided at the CRIEM offices on the 8th floor at 680 Sherbrooke St. (where 5-15 others are typically present). Up to a third of the scheduled time will take place at the offices of the Table de Quartier Peter-McGill.

Personnel with whom the intern will be engaging:

• McGill faculty: Prof. Nik Luka
• Other university faculty: Prof. Leila Ghaffari (Concordia) and Prof. Juan Torres (UdeM)
• Table de quartier Peter-McGill: Gregory Coleman, Sabine Philippidès
• At least two graduate students will also be working on this project

Technical Skills

Fluency in French is preferred. At minimum, the intern must have reasonable capacity to converse for participating in team meetings conducted in French and for interviews, etc., and knowledge of other languages can be an asset. The intern's academic background can vary, but we prefer to host students studying anthropology, geography, sociology, development studies, social work, integrated studies in education, urban studies, environmental studies, public policy, and related fields.

Transferable Skills

The ideal candidate will have experience working with civil-society groups, vulnerablised populations, new Canadians, and households with children. We require that the candidate's CV show evidence of structured engagement with community organisations, which can include sports, summer camps, political organisations, activist groups, etc.

Project Supervisor

Professor Shelley Clark

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of Sociology

Project Description

The "Bridging the Gap in Abortion Access through Telehealth in the United States" project aims to address the gap in abortion access by leveraging telehealth technologies. Recognizing the increasing disparities and restrictions in abortion access across the United States, this project seeks to examine the use of telehealth to support individuals during self-managed abortions, regardless of geographic location or legal restrictions. Central to this project is a strategic collaboration with Women on Web, a pioneering international online abortion provider renowned for its commitment to abortion research, advocacy, and service provision. Women on Web (WoW) is a Canadian non-profit organization, founded in 2005, and is a digital community composed of medical practitioners, help desk members, and researchers. Over its 20 years of operation, WoW has offered safe abortion care in restrictive settings and led abortion research and advocacy in the field of telemedicine and self-managed abortion. Through innovative telehealth solutions and remote access, WoW offers non-judgmental and compassionate abortion access and support to individuals and communities living in both legal and restrictive settings. Research lies at the core of Women on Web’s operations. WoW integrates research with service provision and advocacy. In the past, WoW's research has played a crucial role in shedding light on online abortion trajectories in restrictive environments and has also been instrumental in informing legal reforms in several countries. Within the framework of the DEEP Impact Internship Program, we are looking for interns to join our research program to support our research efforts on abortion access trajectories in the United States.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The intern will be assigned to analyze a dataset of demographic information of US-based individuals seeking abortion services and factors prompting them to seek abortion through WoW. The primary responsibilities of the intern will be data cleaning and some coding of variables, and a thorough descriptive analysis of the dataset assigned. This analysis will involve synthesizing key trends and patterns within the data, such as demographic characteristics of abortion seekers by state and geographical differences. If he/she/they wishes, the intern will also have the opportunity to delve deeper into the data to identify correlations or associations between various variables. This could entail examining relationships between demographic factors and reasons for seeking abortion through WoW. The intern will be supported by the WoW research team throughout the data analysis process. The final deliverable of this project is a report reflecting on the data analysis. Overall, this role presents an opportunity for the intern to gain hands-on experience in data analysis within the context of abortion research, contributing to a deeper understanding of abortion access.

Project Team

Dr. Shelley Clark will supervise the student and monitor progress and provide mentorship. Dr. Clark will also direct the student in using the quantitative analytic software and coding the variables. Dr. Jennifer Fishman help mentor the student and provide substantive input into the research goals and analyses. Dr. Suzanne Veldhuis, affiliated with Women on Web as Advocacy and Research Coordinator, will support Drs. Clark and Fishman in the supervision. The intern will primarily interact with these three researchers and will work under their supervision. The intern is not required to participate in lab or team meetings but is welcome to join if they wish. However, the intern is expected to share updates and progress regarding the data analysis and is to attend regular bimonthly meetings with the researchers.

Technical Skills

The intern is expected to have basic data analysis skills, including some proficiency in statistical analysis and data manipulation techniques for quantitative data, and ideally qualitative data as well. These skills will be essential for conducting the data analysis, identifying trends and patterns. Familiarity with data visualization tools and software packages such as STATA would be an asset. While prior experience in data analysis is preferred, candidates with basic knowledge in data analysis and willingness to learn new skills should be sufficient. Background can be in any area, but interest in reproductive health is essential.

Transferable Skills

The intern is expected to demonstrate strong critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills to draw insightful conclusions from the data. Attention to detail is paramount for this task, as even minor nuances in the data can lead to significant findings. Additionally, the intern should possess a keen eye for detail to ensure accuracy and reliability in their analysis. We highly value teamwork and effective cross-cultural communication skills, given the collaborative nature of our work and the different partners involved. We therefore expect the intern to be open and interested in working on a collaborative, international team.

Project Supervisor

Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Bieler School of Environment

Jetske Duintjer

Project and Research Network Manager, Canadian Wellbeing Knowledges Network

Project Description

Wellbeing policy is gaining momentum worldwide. There is an emerging global movement to bring better concepts and measures of human wellbeing to the centre of policy-making. The Canadian federal government, several provinces and an increasing number of municipal governments and community organizations are approaching policy and budget decisions based on a growing body of knowledge about what makes life good. A global pandemic has also increased public understanding of what really matters for wellbeing and there is a call for governments to make wellbeing or quality-of-life a central policy objective and source of accountability. The Canadian Wellbeing Knowledges Network brings together organizations and individuals from public, private, academic and community sectors to share ideas for advancing and supporting wellbeing policy approaches in Canada. Our common purpose is to provide opportunities for people to engage in catalytic conversations and idea sharing about how they conceptualize, measure, research or support wellbeing and how policy decisions can use a wellbeing lens; to build, exchange and leverage our collective knowledge on the latest wellbeing policy evidence, initiatives and practices; and to activate and strengthen a cross-sectoral and inclusive collaboration network for wellbeing policy across Canada. Some more background can be found at: https://cwkn.ca/home/ Prof Chris Barrington-Leigh (PI), who co-leads the CWKN, has a research focus on life satisfaction, measured as individuals' single-question, subjective, quantitative assessment of how good life feels, overall. This is one leading approach for deriving evidence about human outcomes for policymaking. The CWKN just hired a Research Network Manager for their next phase to expand the network and increase its impact who would be supervising the internship.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

This project is to support our knowledge mobilization efforts, primarily by synthesizing and compiling relevant evidence and policy news into periodic bilingual newsletters.

Additional tasks include:

• maintaining / updating web site content using WordPress content management interface
• maintaining the Network membership database and mailing list
• helping with online member "cafés", webinars, and stakeholder meetings
• organization of online documents supporting other CWKN activities

Student Responsibilities and Deliverables

The primary deliverables will be (1) a series of newsletters, each in both English and French, throughout the term, (2) an updated or evolved web site. Composing newsletters involves understanding the policy and practice community of the CWKN network, and organizing, synthesizing, and translating news and announcements for that audience.

Project Team

This project will be independent with supervision from and regular meetings with Jetske Duintjer and Professor Barrington-Leigh, but may include collaborations with our outside partners and Leadership Team.

Technical Skills

• Choosing, synthesizing, summarizing wellbeing policy news items: writing for a diverse professional/policy audience.
• Composing pretty/formatted (ie HTML) emails using a standard email client or a specialized mailing list manager service.
• Managing a website using WordPress.
• Managing files using Google Drive.
• French proficiency is an asset.

Transferable Skills

• Video editing skills or interest in learning (cutting/editing; annotating video using Shotcut or Openshot (ie. open source software)

Supplemental Materials

Please submit a writing sample.

Project Supervisor

Professor Nicholas King Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy

Project Description

The PREDICT2 project is developing and testing a clinical risk prediction system to improve the triage of 9-1-1 calls, with the goals of improving patient outcomes, optimising resources allocation, and increasing Urgences-santé’s resilience. The project team will build and test a decision-support tool, based on patient-level clinical data and machine learning, to help emergency call-takers and nurses differentiate between patients who need an ambulance immediately, and patients who can wait or be better served by non-emergent care. As the sole provider of paramedical services to the 2.5 million residents of the islands of Montreal and Laval, Urgences-santé has always endeavoured to provide responsive, excellent and equitable prehospital emergency care. Though PREDICT2’s primary goals are to improve the timeliness and fit of care, it is incumbent on the research team to assess algorithmic bias in our prediction models to address potential changes to the equity of the delivery of care.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The intern will support the research team in developing an evaluation plan to assess the performance of PREDICT2 decision-support tools within the five main functions of the prototype: probabilistic matching of callers to their health data; reorientation of low priority calls; upgrading of undertriaged calls; optimisation of the calls-waiting queue; and downgrading of overtriaged calls during surges in call volume. These tools are being evaluated in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and equity, as compared to baseline performance in current practice. The internship deliverable will be an equity evaluation framework, including a literature review, a measurement section based on which equity characteristics are prioritized and the data-sets available to the project team, an analysis plan including specific equity measures, and an approach to interpreting the findings.

Project Team

In addition to regular meetings with the internship supervisor, the student will interact with the project team, including PREDICT2 project director Dr. Luc de Montigny (Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health (EBOH)) and Dr. Erin Strumpf (EBOH and Economics). The student will also attend PREDICT2 team meetings remotely, and will be offered an observer shift at Urgences-santé’s emergency communication centre.

Technical Skills

The applicant should have some experience in conducting reviews of academic literature and working with quantitative data, particularly with respect to measurement and analysis of equity. A background, or at least an interest, in any of the following would be seen as an asset: EMS/PEC, health care service delivery, prediction or model-performance assessment, impact evaluation, equity measurement. Because key project documents may be available in French only, and meetings and consultations may take place in French, the ideal applicant will be bilingual, with strong French reading and writing skills.

Transferable Skills

Applicants should be able to work independently while seeking help when needed, conduct themselves in a professional manner during team meetings, and maintain a high level of attention to detail.

Project Supervisor

Professor Lara Khoury Faculty of Law

Project Description

This research project uses a documentary methodology, drawing on academic literature and media sources, to analyze the social context surrounding selected major liability class actions (or comparable collective procedures) in the fields of health and environmental protection. It forms part of a broader research programme that has begun to identify, catalogue, and examine collective liability claims brought against states and industrial or institutional actors in four domains: healthcare safety, health innovation, public health, and environmental protection and climate change. The programme covers several countries. A central objective of the programme is to situate these claims within their specific social contexts, thereby illuminating their connections to perceived failures of traditional health governance. Indeed, the project is grounded in the hypothesis that inadequate governmental responses to, and industrial responsibility towards, health and environmental crises are increasingly prompting citizens to initiate civil liability litigation as a means of catalyzing changes in public policy, as well as in industry and institutional practices. By documenting these social contexts, the research contributes to assessing whether collective liability procedures represent effective tools for advancing social, policy, industrial, and institutional change. Within this framework, the DEEP Impact Internship will pursue several specific objectives, including: (i) identifying the motivations of claimants in bringing such actions; (ii) determining whether alternative avenues for achieving similar changes were pursued by claimants or their communities prior to litigation; and (iii) evaluating whether and how these legal actions are associated with tangible “on-the-ground” changes.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

1) Become familiar with the chosen litigations; 2) Undertake documentary research and analysis of the social context surrounding each litigation (literature and medial outlets); 3) Draft research reports (one per litigation) exposing the results of the research in relation to the questions and objective above (to be refined prior to the start of the project). The final delivery will be those research reports. There is not a set number of them to deliver because some will have a richer social context than others - we will do as many as possible during the internship period.

Project Team

There will be at least one law student involved in the project in the Fall.

Technical Skills

Experience with social sciences and humanities research techniques. This project is open to all students in the social science and humanities. It does not require legal knowledge or legal research skills.

Transferable Skills

Good drafting abilities, good organizational skills, capacity for information synthesis, capacity to meet deadlines.

Project Supervisor

Professor David Wright

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of History & Classical Studies

Project Description

One of the most profound transformations of the medical profession in Canada has been the dramatic rise in the proportion of women medical practitioners. From an historic representation of under 10% until WWII, the number and proportion of women practising medicine has steadily increased from the 1960s, such that, by 2030, more women doctors will be in clinical practice than men. Although there has been considerable research on the first generation of women “pioneers”, and more recent discussions about the differential clinical lives of women doctors, there is scarcely any literature on the 1960s and 1970s, a period often referred to as the second wave of feminism. This DEEP Impact Internship project examines this transformative period.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The intern will contribute to a larger project on the transformation of the Canadian medical profession by examining, in detail, the dramatic increase in the number of women practitioners, in Canada, between 1961 and 1976. The intern will identify all women practitioners from completed databases of the 1961 and 1976 editions of the Canadian Medical Directory (CMD). The intern will use internet sources to verify and complement information from the CMD data and help reconstitute the physician workforce of the time.

Project Team

There will likely be one other intern working, in the Fall Term, on a related topic. Other than that, the weekly meetings with Professor Wright, and the other duties (as part of the larger group of DEEP Impact Interns), the work will be conducted independently.

Technical Skills

The intern should have an interest and background in contemporary historical research, as demonstrated by having taken a university-level course in Canadian history, or the history of health / medicine, or a related course on the politics of immigration, as offered by the Department of Political Science.

Transferable Skills

The intern should be familiar with standard Microsoft Office applications, including Excel, Word and Powerpoint. Any knowledge of mapping software (such as GIS) will be considered an asset, but is not strictly required.

Project Supervisor

Professor Frank Elgar

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of Psychology Professor

Jai Shah

Department of Psychiatry

Project Description

Mental health problems often begin during adolescence and young adulthood, and young people facing financial hardship are at higher risk for emotional and psychological difficulties. In countries such as Brazil, challenges such as unreliable access to food, clothing, or other basic needs can strongly affect youth wellbeing, but these experiences are still understudied in mental health research. This project will explore how experiences of material hardship relate to mental health difficulties in young people using data from a large Brazilian youth study. The project is guided by a “clinical staging” approach, which looks at mental health as developing gradually over time rather than as fixed diagnostic categories. The goal is to better understand how social and economic conditions shape early mental health experiences and how to better support youth facing adversity. The project is part of a broader research program focused on youth mental health. Findings may help inform future research, clinical practice, and public policy related to youth mental health supports in lower-resource settings.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

• Contribute to a structured literature review on social determinants of youth mental health and clinical staging. Deliverable is an annotated bibliography and a synthesis memo summarizing key gaps.
• Code and harmonize survey items from the Brazilian cohort that index material deprivation (e.g., food insecurity, clothing inadequacy, unmet basic needs) and conduct descriptive analyses linking these indicators to early-stage psychopathology. Deliverable is a reproducible analysis script and a results summary with figures.
• Draft a section of a planned conceptual or empirical manuscript, highlighting ethical and policy implications. Deliverable is a written contribution to the manuscript.

Project Team

The student will work closely with post-doctoral (Allison MacNeil) and doctoral (Letícia Muller Haas) collaborators, and will be part of a larger research team focused on youth mental health. The student will also have the opportunity to interface with partners in Brazil at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo.

Technical Skills

• Strong writing and synthesis skills
• Comfort reading peer-reviewed literature in mental health, epidemiology, or related fields
• Some familiarity with quantitative data analysis (R or SPSS) is an asset
• Organizational skills and attention to detail when working with cohort data and codebooks
• Portuguese language skills are an asset, but not required

Transferable Skills

• Strong problem-solving skills
• Effective team player
• Self-directed learner
• Time-management skills
• Critical and ethical reasoning about research design and use of evidence

Supplemental Materials

Please submit a writing sample (e.g., a course paper, literature review, or research write-up) that showcases your analytic and synthetic skills.

Project Supervisor

Professor Amélie Quesnel-Vallée

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of Sociology

Project Description

This project aims to build the evidence base for policies that measurably reduce food insecurity among low-income households. The intern will conduct a structured literature review addressing four interrelated questions: (1) Is there an identifiable income threshold - or "tipping point" - beyond which increases in disposable income produce a significant reduction in food insecurity? (2) Which population segments (e.g., social assistance recipients, low-wage workers, single-person households, loneparent families, households with children) are most sensitive to such income changes? (3) What magnitude of increase in disposable income is associated with meaningful reductions in food insecurity (e.g., a one-percentage-point decline in prevalence)? (4) Which policy instruments - tax measures, social assistance enhancements, targeted transfers - are most effective at achieving durable reductions? This project is well-suited to a student with an interest in health economics, health equity, social policy, or population health, and offers direct exposure to government-facing research with real policy stakes. French language proficiency is a strong asset.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The intern will search peer-reviewed and grey literature across Canadian and international contexts, screen and extract data using a structured protocol, and synthesize findings in a written review suitable for policy audiences. By the end of the semester, the primary deliverable will be a completed, systematic or structured literature review on income thresholds and food insecurity, written for a policy-facing audience, and a research poster presented at the DEEP Student Poster Showcase.

Project Team

The intern will participate in team meetings.

Technical Skills

Required

• Demonstrated ability to search academic databases (e.g., PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, or equivalent) and grey literature sources
• Strong academic writing skills in English and/or French
• Ability to read and synthesize scholarly literature independently
• Familiarity with basic concepts in population health, public health, or social policy

Assets

• Prior exposure to systematic or structured review methodology (e.g., PRISMA, scoping review frameworks)
• Experience with reference management software (e.g., Zotero, EndNote)
• Ability to work in both official languages (the broader project context is Quebec policy)
• Background in economics, sociology, social policy, epidemiology, or a related discipline
• Familiarity with concepts related to income support programs, food insecurity measurement, or poverty reduction policy

Ideal academic background

• Students in public health, sociology, economics, social policy, or a related field.
• Students with coursework or research experience in health inequalities, social determinants of health, or policy analysis are especially encouraged to apply.

Transferable Skills

Required

• Strong organizational skills and ability to manage a structured, multi-stage task independently over a semester
• Attention to detail, particularly in tracking sources, applying inclusion/exclusion criteria consistently, and documenting decisions
• Clear written communication, with the ability to synthesize complex material for a policy-relevant audience
• Reliability and capacity to meet deadlines with minimal supervision

Assets

• Experience working in a research team or professional environment
• Ability to communicate findings verbally, including comfort presenting work in progress to a supervisor or small group
• Comfort navigating ambiguity in an emerging evidence base (i.e., drawing conclusions where literature is thin or mixed)
• Interest in the intersection of research and public policy, and motivation to produce work with real-world applications

Project Supervisor

Professor David Wright

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of History & Classical Studies

Project Description

This internship project examines the impact of changes in Canadian immigration regulations, in the 1960s, on the composition of health care practitioners. It will do so through a case study of Montreal. The intern will examine characteristics of foreign-trained physicians from completed datasets of the 1961 and 1976 Canadian Medical Directory (CMD). The intern will use internet sources to complement information from the CMD data to help reconstitute the physician population of Montreal (c 1961 & 1976), placing these groups within the context of Montreal’s own changing ethno-cultural demography of the time.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The Deep Impact Intern will perform the following research functions: (1) identify a subset of all practitioners practising on the island of Montreal who were trained outside of Canada; (2) validate and add to this information by searching online (obituaries, newspaper articles); and (3) analyze and chart their countries of origin.

Project Team

There will likely be one other intern working, in the Fall Term, on a related topic. Other than that, and the weekly meetings with Professor Wright, the work will be conducted independently.

Technical Skills

The intern should be an undergraduate (U2 or above at the time of the internship), who has taken at least one University-level course in the post-1867 Canadian history and/or at least one course in the history of health and medicine. Similar courses on Canadian immigration policy of the post WWII era, offered by the Department of Political Science, will be accepted as a substitute.

Transferable Skills

The DEEP Impact Intern should be familiar with standard Microsoft Office applications, including Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. Experience using mapping software (GIS, for example) would be an asset, but is not required.

Project Supervisor

Professor Amélie Quesnel-Vallée

Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy | Department of Sociology

Mariloue Daudier

Senior EDI Advisor, DNA-to-RNA

Project Description

DNA-to-RNA (D2R)’s vision is to deliver genomic-based RNA therapies to benefit the health of different populations affected by infectious diseases, rare and neglected diseases, common chronic conditions such as cancer, and cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases. Read more about D2R: https://www.mcgill.ca/dna-to-rna/

From its inception, D2R was designed to deliver genomic-based RNA therapies that not only advance scientific discovery, but also address the specific needs of medically underserved groups and members of equity-deserving groups (EDGs). As such, D2R is inherently driven by principles of EDI, and D2R is committed to designing, promoting and applying best EDI practices to help foster research excellence. One component of this commitment is D2R’s dedication to supporting the recruitment and advancement of RNA researchers from EDGs. To advance these commitments, D2R has implemented a robust set of EDI engagement requirements and activities to support professors and trainees. In particular, the D2R EDI Communities of Practice for Professors and Trainees have fostered meaningful engagement, knowledge sharing, and capacity building within the research ecosystem. Building on this foundation, D2R aims to further strengthen its EDI community by expanding engagement beyond academia. In Fall 2026, D2R seeks to assess the needs, expectations, and priorities of equity‑deserving groups represented through community organizations and patient‑partner initiatives that could both contribute to and benefit from D2R‑funded research projects. To support this work, two DEEP Impact Interns will collaborate on the development of a structured needs assessment focused on community organizations and patient‑partners. Through a combination of semi‑guided focus groups and individual meetings, this assessment will explore barriers, opportunities, and concrete strategies to support the inclusion of equity‑deserving groups in D2R research projects and to facilitate equitable access to RNA‑based therapeutics.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

The two EDI interns will:

• Conduct interviews with 10 to 15 representatives from community organizations and/or patient‑partner initiatives.
• Present an assessment report following the interviews.
• Design and present a poster for the DEEP Student Poster Showcase.

Project Team

The interns will be supervised by Dr. Amélie Quesnel-Vallée to work with Mariloue Daudier, Senior EDI Advisor at D2R. They will be expected to work in person at the D2R office 10 hours per week to ensure advancement and continued collaboration to meet the deliverables of this internship.

Technical Skills

Required

• Knowledge on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
• Experience in preparing reports with recommendations
• Experience in facilitation in the context of consultations (ex. focus groups, community events, etc.
• Academic background could be in any academic field related to Equity work

Asset

• Bilingual (French and English)

Transferable Skills

Required skills

• Public speaking
• Curiosity
• Collaboration
• Capacity to provide rigorous work
• Excellent time management to meet deadlines

Project Supervisor

Professor Kevin Manaugh

Department of Geography

Project Description

Bicycling is a mode of travel whose significance in Canada has grown considerably since the turn of the 21st century, in part because it holds promise to create a more humane and sustainable transportation system and society at large. However, mainstream cycling advocacy and policy have been critiqued for their technocratic focus on physical infrastructure that ignores and implicitly reproduces unjust power relations. While much scholarship has been devoted to documenting and/or explaining the relationship between cycling practices and categories such as gender, race, and class, trans and gender-diverse people’s specific relationship with cycling remains largely unexamined. As such, the proposed study will be the first ever to focus exclusively on trans people’s cycling mobility, as well as the first to address this topic in a Canadian context. While the project overall is mixed methods, for the DEEP Impact Internship the student will focus on the quantitative component of the research, which aims to discover how trans people’s cycling mobility patterns may differ from those of cis people, on both national sub-national scales in Canada. This question will be answered through statistical analysis of data from the Mobilizing Justice survey, a recent Canada-wide survey on transport poverty and social exclusion. Ultimately, the project will produce knowledge of trans people’s lived experiences and patterns of bicycling so that bicycling as a transportation method can be made more inclusive for all, and thus deliver more effectively on its promise of positive social change.

Intern Responsibilities & Deliverables

Deliverables will include a cleaned and documented analytical dataset, preliminary statistical analysis, and a short written report summarizing key findings.

Project Team

The intern will work independently on specific analytical tasks while also participating in lab meetings and receiving mentorship from the supervisor and graduate students in the lab.

Technical Skills

Required

• Experience with quantitative research methods and survey data analysis, including familiarity with multivariate regression techniques.
• Experience using statistical software such as R for data cleaning and analysis.

Assets

• Coursework or research experience in transportation, geography, sociology, urban studies, public health, gender studies, or related fields.
• Experience working with large survey datasets, data visualization, GIS/spatial analysis, or equity-focused research.

Transferable Skills

The intern will demonstrate strong written and verbal communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a research environment. Required skills include time management, organization, and the ability to interpret and communicate quantitative findings clearly. Assets include experience working on equity- or justice-oriented research projects, familiarity with gender diversity and LGBTQ2S+ issues, and experience contributing to academic writing or collaborative research teams.

Supplemental Materials

Please submit a short writing sample.