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Sophie Lachapelle (she/her) is a critical scholar and community activist in Kingston, Ontario.

Working and living on the territories of the Michi Saagiig (Mississauga Anishinaabeg) and Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk Haudenosaunee) Nations, Sophie’s research focuses on the impacts of criminalization for communities historically pushed to the margins of Canadian society. Specifically, Sophie focuses on the emotions involved in the processes of criminalization and incarceration to highlight the ways in which oppressive structures – like settler-colonialism, racism, misogyny, capitalism, etc. – become entrenched in our everyday interactions with one another.

Sophie is currently completing her PhD in Criminology at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer M. Kilty. Provisionally titled Make Yourself At Home: An Institutional Ethnography of Homelessness and Poverty Management in Kingston, Ontario, Sophie’s dissertation centres the experiences of unhoused people as they attempt to survive homelessness while facing constant surveillance, discrimination, and criminalization from within the local system of shelters and social services.

Sophie hopes that her dissertation will not only help unhoused people in Kingston to more easily navigate these services. She also hopes her research will problematize the design and implementation of local shelter and social services as underpinned by oppressive settler-colonial discourses and ultimately contributing to the worsening quality of life experienced by unhoused people in Canada.