Our research group is composed of academics from different disciplines. You can find their bios below.
Professors
Dr. Nada Basir
Assistant Professor at the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business
Dr. Basir holds a BSc and MSc in Molecular Biotechnology and a PhD in Strategic Management from the Schulich School of Business, York University. Her research interests are at the intersection of strategy, organization behaviour and entrepreneurship. Her work explores how organizations and institutions effect entrepreneurship and innovation, with a special focus on gender, emotions, and social impact. Her current projects look at the role of incubators and cooperative education programs in entrepreneurial identity, how immigrant women entrepreneurs leverage business support organizations, how star scientists emerge, and infertility and the effects of this on women's career. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Basir worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Marketing and Business Development. She is herself an entrepreneur with experience in both the non-profit and for-profit sector.
Dr. Basir teaches courses in Entrepreneurial Strategy, Organization Design, and Social Entrepreneurship.
Dr. Ana Ferrer
Economic Professor and Associate Dean of Research for the Arts Department
Dr. Ferrer's current research focuses on the outcomes of immigrants to Canada, particularly immigrant women. Her research is published in journals such as The Journal of Human Resources, The Journal of Labour Economics, The Canadian Journal of Economics. Professor Ferrer is also involved with the labour community of researchers internationally and in Canada. She serves as the immigration-subject editor for IZA World of Labour, a publication aimed at disseminating economic research in non-academic circles. She is also the Secretary of the Canadian Economic Association (CEA) and the director of the Canadian Labour Economic Forum (CLEF) a group aiming to facilitate research discussion and promote networking opportunities among Canadian researchers in labour economics.
Dr. Bessma Momani
Political Science Professor and Interim Associate Vice-President of Interdisciplinary Research
Dr. Bessma Momani is Full Professor in the Department of Political Science and Assistant Vice-President of Research and International at the University of Waterloo. She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States’ Institute in Washington, DC, and a Fulbright Scholar. She is a Governor on the board of the International Development Research Centre.
She was interim Associate Vice-President, Interdisciplinary and Sponsored Research 2021-2022, Assistant Vice-President, International Relations at the University of Waterloo in 2020, Assistant Vice-President, Research and International in the Office of Research in 2021, a 2015 fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, and was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Mortara Center. Bessma is a Fellow of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary and sits on the Advisory Council to the Middle East Institute’s program on Economics and Energy. She also sits on the Editorial Board of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal
She has worked as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, both in the communications office and the Independent Evaluation Office. She has also consulted for Global Affairs Canada (GAC) as a 2021 Visiting Scholar in its International Assistance Research and Knowledge Division by looking at economic security and digital transformations in the Middle East with a particular focus on women and youth, helping GAC devise its new Middle East strategy. From 2018- 2022 she served as member of the National Security Transparency Advisory Group at Public Safety Canada.
Bessma has received a number of awards and prizes for her research and work. She has been awarded multiple Insight Development Grants, Insight Grants, Partnership Development and Engage Grants, and Connection Grants funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the director of a three-year-funded Department of National Defence network called the Defence and Security Foresight Group tasked with providing policy-relevant advice to the Department of National Defence. In recent years, Bessma spearheaded the Pluralism Project which explored the link between Canadian diversity and economic prosperity. This has led to a multi-million-dollar funding grant from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on bringing visible minority women into the Canadian economy and Heritage Canada on the impact of disinformation on ethnocultural communities.
Bessma has authored, co-authored and co-edited more than twelve books. In addition, she has written more than 80 peer-reviewed academic articles or book chapters that examine international organizations, international political economy, gender and diversity, cybersecurity and digital transformations, political economy of the Middle East and geopolitics of the Middle East.
As a frequent media and political analyst on the Middle East, international affairs and the global economy, Bessma has written frequent editorials in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, the Economist, Washington Post, the National Post and the Toronto Star. She is also a regular media contributor, having done thousands of live broadcast interviews, with CNN, CBC News, CTV, Al Jazeera, PBS, TRT World and BNN Bloomberg.