Welcome! I’m an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy and Equity at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Specifically, I research online education and resistance to neoliberal restructuring. I draw from extensive experience teaching in secondary schools and public education advocacy to bridge research and practice.
My multidisciplinary research engages critical policy sociology, social and cultural geography, as well as surveillance studies, to understand the contexts within which inequity and injustice persist in schools. The framework for my politics is transformative justice and the practice of restorative justice when conditions for restoration are those worth preserving. My work is unreservedly “political.”
I am also a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ontario, and formerly the research cluster lead for Community Engagement and Public Scholarship at the Institute for Research on Digital Literacies at York University in Toronto.
During my 2-year tenure as a Postdoctoral Fellow, I researched policy enactment and the implementation of educational policy online during COVID-19 school closures. I was also a steering committee member of the President’s Advisory Council on EDI as an appointed Post-Doc Representative, developing a university-wide EDI framework.
I hold a PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto (2019) and an MA in English from York University (2010). My dissertation research examined the relationship between e-learning and educational inequality in the Toronto District School Board. My manuscript is currently under contract with with University of Toronto Press.
I am the Vice President of the Canadian Association of Sociology of Education and a member of the Critical Geographies of Education American Association of Geographers Specialty Group.
To reach me, email beyhan.farhadi@mail.utoronto.ca
Twitter handle @BBfarhadi