Her academic path wasn’t linear. It was interrupted. Torn apart. Rebuilt — not in spite of adversity, but through it.
Years ago, Rachel was pursuing a PhD in psychology when a series of personal crises — domestic violence, addiction, and mental health struggles — led to her arrest during a period of Canada’s harshest “tough on crime” policies. She was incarcerated in a federal prison and, for a time, believed her academic and professional future had ended.
But that wasn’t the end — it was a beginning.
While in prison, Rachel discovered the Walls to Bridges program, which offers for-credit university courses to incarcerated students. That experience reignited something powerful in her: the belief that knowledge could be a lifeline — not just for herself, but for others.
After her release, Rachel applied to the PhD program in Criminology at uOttawa — encouraged by professors who had read her writing in the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons. She was accepted. She received the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, then a prestigious SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. She didn’t just return to academia — she reshaped it from within.
Her dissertation explored how women incarcerated in Canada resist structural violence, build solidarity, and survive the trauma of confinement. Grounded in her lived experience and deep research, her work has contributed to national conversations on carceral justice and the ethics of engaged scholarship.
Rachel is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Carleton University, teaching a course at uOttawa on “Women, Criminalization, and Gendered Confinement.” She’s working on a book proposal based on her thesis and continues to speak publicly about incarceration, education, and social transformation.
She doesn’t just study systems of oppression — she challenges them. In classrooms. In policy circles. In public conversations. And most importantly, within communities too often excluded from academic spaces.
Her advice to future researchers: “Choose a research topic that matters to you. One that keeps you up at night — because it will shape your life for years. And surround yourself with people who believe in your vision, even when you’re struggling to see it yourself.”
A quote that guides her: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” — Luke 1:52–53
For Rachel, this is more than a verse — it’s a vision of a world reimagined, where power is reclaimed and justice restored.