YorkSpace
YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.
Communities in YorkSpace
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- Previously Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES)
- The Global Labour Research Centre (GLRC) engages in the study of work, employment and labour in the context of a constantly changing global economy.
- Lives Outside the Lines: a Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar
- Used only for SWORD Deposit by Adminstrator
- Welcome to WILAA, a gathering place for materials related to research projects that explore work-integrated learning and disability-related accessibility and accommodations.
Recent Submissions
Three Essays On Cambodia?s Post-Genocide Development
(2025-07-23)
This dissertation examines how the Cambodian genocide and agricultural practices have shaped the country’s long-run development. It focuses on three outcomes: macroeconomic growth, individual-level human capital, and the gender composition of agricultural labor.
Chapter 1 analyzes the long-term economic effects of the Cambodian genocide using a counterfactual scenario that removes demographic disruptions caused by mass killings. I simulate population structures using fertility and survival rates from 1950 to 2015 and embed them in a production function with heterogeneous labor and intergenerational skill transmission. The results show that although actual GDP per capita initially exceeded the counterfactual due to a higher working-age ratio and more land and capital per worker, this advantage reversed over time. Persistent human capital losses and a delayed recovery in skill composition led to slower productivity growth and reduced long-run economic output.
Chapter 2 uses the sudden, nationwide disruption of the Pol Pot regime (1975 to 1979) as a natural experiment to estimate how being born in an urban area during the genocide affected adult education and wealth. Applying a generalized Difference-in-Differences approach, I use relative district birth size and other indicators to proxy for pre-genocide urbanization. Urban-born cohorts completed 0.02 to 1.6 fewer years of schooling, with the 1977 cohort in Phnom Penh showing the most significant decline in education and wealth. Results are robust across specifications and highlight the lasting human capital impact of forced urban evacuation.
Chapter 3 investigates whether rice cultivation is associated with lower female participation in agriculture. At the farm level, I run OLS regressions of the female labor share on the proportion of land allocated to rice. At the district level, I use both OLS and IV regressions, instrumenting rice yield with elevation based on the suitability of lowland areas for rice production. Results show that farms with more rice land employ fewer women, and districts with higher rice yields have lower female participation. IV estimates confirm a correlation between rice cultivation and reduced female agricultural labor.
Together, these three studies offer insight into how violence and agricultural practices have shaped Cambodia’s post-genocide development.
Informal Consensus-Building As An Emerging Praxis In International Human Rights Law
(2025-07-23)
This dissertation examines the practice of informal consensus-building in international law. It defines this practice as a collaborative process through which scholars, advocates, and practitioners, working outside formal institutional mandates, develop shared understandings of legal norms. Drawing on findings from case studies and insider action research in international human rights law, this research demonstrates how such practices can shape the interpretation, implementation, and progressive development of international legal norms.
Yet not all such practices are alike, and some have proven more influential than others over time. A comparative analysis of three past initiatives—the 1945 Statement of Essential Human Rights, the 1984 Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1985 Paris Minimum Standards of Human Rights Norms in a State of Emergency—illustrates how the influence of an informal consensus-building initiative is closely tied to the perceived legitimacy of its outputs.
That perceived legitimacy, in turn, is shaped both by the strategic choices made during drafting and dissemination and by the broader political and institutional contexts in which these initiatives emerge. To explore this dynamic in contemporary practice, the dissertation examines the development of the 2023 Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies. As an insider to this consensus-building process, I provide a detailed account of its development, focusing on the tensions between inclusivity, representation, technical rigour, timeliness, and impact.
Together, the case studies and action research presented here contribute to scholarly efforts to understand how norms gain legitimacy and traction within communities of practice. Building on the work of Emanuel Adler, Thomas Franck, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, and others, this dissertation underscores both the normative potential and procedural complexity of informal consensus-building as a distinct mode of praxis in international human rights law. It calls for greater scholarly attention to these practices, and for enhanced transparency, inclusivity, and methodological rigour in their development.
Proteomic Study Of The Ubiquitin E3 Ligase HUWE1 Interaction With Ubiquitin And ADP-Ribose Modified Proteins
(2025-07-23)
Ubiquitination and ADP-ribosylation are important post-translational modifications (PTMs), especially in cellular response to DNA damage. HECT, UBA, and WWE domain containing E3 ubiquitin protein ligase 1 (HUWE1) is an important ubiquitin E3 ligase involved in many cellular processes. HUWE1 contains regions involved in substrate interaction and domains for PTM recognition. Specifically, HUWE1 WWE and tandem ubiquitin-binding motif (tUBM) domains interact with ADPr/iso-ADPr and ubiquitin, respectively. However, the interaction between these domains and cellular ADP-ribose and ubiquitin and potentially substrate interactions are not well investigated. Thus, this project aimed to investigate the interactome of HUWE1 WWE and tUBM domain, focusing on their ability to bind proteins modified by mono-ADP-ribose (MAR)/poly-ADP-ribose (PAR) and ubiquitin using GST pulldown assay. First, using Western blot and confocal microscopy, distinct dynamics of ubiquitination and ADP-ribosylation were observed in response to different DNA damage treatments. Second, the study demonstrated that the WWE-tUBM domain interacts with both cellular ADP-ribose and ubiquitin. Moreover, through a proteomic approach using affinity mass spectrometry, this study identified novel proteins that interact with the WWE and tUBM domains following Ultraviolet (UV) induced DNA damage. Together, the findings of this project contribute to a better understanding of how HUWE1 engages with its substrates and highlight the role of WWE and tUBM domains and their ability to recognize PTMs in mediating these interactions.
Creating Community in Adult Literacy and Language Education: The Impact of Multiliteracies-Informed Curriculum Development
(2025-07-23)
This qualitative study involved the creation of a unit of materials for adult literacy learners informed by design-based research (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), multiliteracies theory (New London Group, 1996), and task repetition pedagogies (Hanzawa & Suzuki, 2023). While design-based research offered opportunities for collaboration and iteration between myself, as the researcher, and two in-practice language and literacy educators, multiliteracies theory and task repetition opened up pedagogical opportunities to honour the demands being placed on these two educators. Through developing the materials collaboratively and listening to the educators’ experiences, I sought to understand how they were impacted by a multiliteracies-informed curriculum. These educators were creating communities of belonging for adult literacy learners in a system which focused on deficiency. Their roles required a tolerance for complexity and creative pedagogies to bridge gaps between theory and practice. While a skill-focused approach to literacy remains part of these educators’ teaching realities, this study points to a need for fluid definitions of literacy which respond to changes in context and learners. Through this fluidity, adult literacy and language educators are better supported in imagining new literacy futures for their learners.
Dependent Contractors and the Ontario Labour Relations Board: Understanding the Board's Role in a Capitalist Economy
(2025-07-23)
This dissertation explores the evolution and politics behind the concept of the ‘dependent contractor’ in Ontario, from its earliest incarnations in the late 1970s to its current usage in the gig economy, as interpreted and applied by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB). It examines how the Board’s interpretation and application of dependent contractor provisions has impacted workers whose employment status falls somewhere between traditional notions of independent contractor and employee, i.e. the ‘grey area’ as the Board has referred to it, over a period of changing employment relationships and of increasingly precarious work. The research tracks these changes over time, examining how previous OLRB jurisprudence on dependent contractors can be seen to impact its decisions in more contemporary contexts (e.g Foodora, 2020) and what this might tell us about the Board’s understanding of employment relations in a changing capitalist economy. The analysis seeks to place the actions of the OLRB into a broader social context to assess what factors have influenced the Board’s decisions and gauge how it understands both its potential to address employment inequities and the limits it faces in doing so within a capitalist economy. This dissertation argues that the OLRB operated with an implicit industrial pluralist understanding of labour-capital relations and made decisions informed by that approach and, in doing so, lacked an appreciation of how capitalist workplaces were changing over time in a way that evaded control via that understanding. It further argues that while bodies such as the OLRB have some autonomy from capitalists and the capitalist state, they are unable to, nor are they designed to, overcome or dramatically alter the power imbalances that exist in capitalist civil society.