Professor Glenna Harris

B.A., Trent University
M.A., Queen's University
Ph. D., University of Toronto

Research and Teaching Interests

Glenna Harris is a cultural geographer, who engages with cultural-social geographies of contemporary space and identity. In investigating children, citizenship, and the school, her research considers how children's identities have been situated through the institutional space of the public school as future citizens more so than as young people with present day needs and experiences. This contributes to contemporary work understanding citizenship as an increasingly neo-liberal construct, shaped by market-oriented discourses of self-regulating behaviour, excellence, and achievement over community belonging. More recently she has begun to consider contemporary geographies of gender, identity, and space, through women's leisure pursuits and craft. Late 20th Century and 21st Century resurgence in 'stitch and bitch' knitting circles, and public perception of such public leisure-oriented gatherings, offer ways of understanding how domestically-perceived crafts shape women's mobility and opportunities outside of the private home.

Glenna's teaching interests and experiences encompass a diverse range of aspects of the human-urban environment, including the cultural and social geography of the city, urban environmental issues, gender and space, and geographies of Ontario and the urban-rural fringe.