Project Team
Zack Taylor
Co-Investigator and Project ManagerBiography: Dr. Taylor is former Director of the Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. He is a co-investigator of the Canadian Census Data Discovery Project, which is funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant.
David Armstrong
Co-investigatorBiography: Dr. Armstrong is Canada Research Chair in Political Methodology, Director of the Centre for Computational and Quantitative Social Science, and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. He specializes in statistics and data analysis. His research spans topics from measurement and latent trait estimation to the role of non-linearity and data mining techniques in statistical models. He is a regular instructor at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
Victoria Esses
Co-InvestigatorBiography: Dr. Esses is Director of the Network on Economic and Social Trends (NEST), Professor of Psychology, and Co-Chair of the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership. Her research focuses on immigration policy and practice, including public attitudes toward immigration and cultural diversity; promising practices in settlement and integration; factors promoting the settlement and integration of immigrants; and the measurement of community welcome-ability and immigrant outcomes. Esses is regularly consulted by federal, provincial, and municipal governments on immigration issues, and her research has had a major impact on immigration policy and practice in Canada and internationally.
Christopher Hewitt
Mitacs Postdoctoral FellowBiography: Chris holds a Mitacs postdoctoral fellowship with Esri Canada, where he is constructing a spatial database and mapping portal incorporating UNI·CEN data. He has contributed to the geospatial components of the project, including digitizing 1951–66 census tract boundaries. He completed his PhD in 2016.
Moira Benedict
Project Assistant, Fall 2020Biography: Moira helped build the cross-time geographic linkage tables. Before graduating in 2021, she was a Social Science student at Western, where she majored in Political Science with a minor in Applied Statistics.
Brittany Bouteiller
2022 Mitacs BSI InternBiography: Brittany built a database of all questions asked in the historical Census. She graduated from Western University’s Honours Program in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics in 2022. Her work was funded by a Mitacs BSI Grant.
Kyle Hendricks
Project Assistant, Summer 2020 and 2021Biography: Kyle worked on the standardized variable naming system and wrote the initial source data processing code. Before graduating in 2021, he was enrolled in an Honours Specialization in Synthetic Biology at Western University and is continually working to take an interdisciplinary approach to investigate and solve problems.
Allan Hsu
2022 Mitacs BSI Research AssistantBiography: Allan advanced the construction of the cross-time geographical linkage tables. He graduated in 2022 from Western University with an Honours Specialization in Politics, Philosophy, & Economics (PPE) and a minor in Psychology. He is interested in immigration law, international human rights, and how policies impact marginalized groups. His work was funded by a Mitacs BSI Grant.
Alissa McInnis
Project assistant, Summer 2020Biography: Alissa worked on the standardized variable naming table and the cross-time geographic linkage tables. She is a General Science student at Western University, majoring in Biology and Women and Gender Studies.
Reagan Cockburn
Research AssistantBiography: Reagan digitized 1851–1951 Census data for the Toronto area as part of a partnership project with the City of Toronto. She is a fourth-year student at Western University, pursuing an Honours Double Major in Political Science and Psychology. She previously volunteered as a Research Analyst at the Leadership and Democracy Lab in the department of Political Science. Her work was funded by a Mitacs BSI Grant.
