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Meet the Team

The CIFRS team is made up of an interdisciplinary group of early-career scholars and professionals located across Canada and the United States. 

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Executive Director | Founder

Mariel Cooksey

Mariel’s  research background focuses on Christianity and far-right extremism in the United States and Canada, with an emphasis on the radicalization of women. She is currently researching the overlap between Gen Z internet culture, climate collapse and accelerationism.

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Director of Research | Founder

Dr. Amy Mack

Amy’s research focuses on the resurgence of ethno-nationalist and white supremacist movements in Canada, and their use of social media to build communities and circulate their ideologies. She is currently researching their narratives of white male victimhood, belonging, and entitlement.

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Founder

Kat Fuller

Fuller’s research interests include masculinities, sexuality, social movements,  post-colonialism, critical theory, and the online environment. He focuses on how gender and sexuality play a part in politics, especially within social (virtual) spaces, as people form a collective identity by  accepting Western centrism.

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Senior Fellow

Dr. Paulo Ravecca

Paulo uses critical political theories to engage with contemporary issues, far-right politics amongst them. He is author of The Politics of Political Science: Re-Writing Latin American Experiences.

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Senior Research Fellow

Dr. Maxwell Kennel

Maxwell's research focuses on social violence, political theologies of time and  history, social accountability and health equity, and critiques of conspiratorial thinking. He is the author of Postsecular History: Political Theology and the Politics of Time, Ontologies of Violence: Deconstruction, and Pacifism, and Displacement.

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Fellow

Karmvir Padda

Karmvir Padda is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology and Legal Studies  department at the University of Waterloo. Her research mainly focuses on radicalization, extremists' use of the internet, right-wing extremism,  online foreign interference (disinformation), research methods and  methodology, and computational social science.

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Fellow

Dr. Emilie El Khoury

Emilie's research focuses on violent extremist groups such as the Islamic State group. She studies the consequences of violence on the victims and relatives of members of armed groups. She is interested in the links between religion and violence, the different types of  radicalization leading to violence, Islamophobia, gender studies,  refugees and racism.

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Fellow

Kayla Preston

Kayla Preston is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the  University of Toronto. Her areas of interest include student activism,  gender, political sociology, and race and colonization. Currently, Kayla  is researching youth activism in Canada and the United  States. She is interested in why and how young people decide to get involved in social and political  organizing.

Headshot of Nazmul Arefin

Fellow

Nazmul Arefin

Nazmul Arefin is a PhD candidate and Killam Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently working as a Research Coordinator on the National Dorothy Killam Fellowship project 'Beyond Victimization: BIPOC Officials in the Canadian Criminal Justice System,' one of only eight awarded in Canada in 2023.

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Fellow

Ayushi Khemka

Ayushi Khemka is a PhD student and Killam Doctoral Laureate in Philosophy at the University of Alberta. She researches digital humanities, philosophy of race, social epistemology, and AI. Her work includes articles in Applied Network Science and the Journal of Academic Ethics, plus a forthcoming co-authored book on Voyant Tools.

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Fellow

Mohamed Elgayar

Mohamed Elgayar is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He currently researches radicalization and extremism in digital spaces – specifically video games. He approaches his work from a post-colonial framework and hopes to incorporate critical theories and methodologies to literature on security studies."

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Fellow

Wilson Hernandez, Ph.D.

Wilson is an education researcher specializing in violence affecting teachers and trauma-sensitive pedagogies. Author of Teaching in the Vortex (in press), exploring everyday violence with Colombian educators. Currently, Capacity Development Coordinator at CPN-PREV.

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Fellow

Dr. Venus Torabi

Dr. Venus Torabi (She/They) is a Digital Humanities researcher whose work examines videogames, radicalization, propaganda, and the semiotics and politics of representation. Their research includes ISIS-modified videogames, white-supremacists’ exploitation of online gaming-adjacent platforms, and algorithmic pathways toward off-platform fringe migration/radicalization.

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Fellow

Dru Morrison

Dru is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is interested in contemporary social theory (e.g., relational sociology, systems theory) and national security. Dru’s current research uses theories of securitization to analyse the Canadian government’s response to the Freedom Convoy.

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Fellow

Jamie R. Noulty

Jamie R. Noulty holds an MA in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Simon Fraser University and is currently enrolled in the PhD Cultural Studies program at Queen’s University. His research focuses on gendered violence, masculinity, post-conflict extremism, and emerging men’s studies.

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Fellow

Taisto Witt

Taisto Witt is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at McGill. His research focuses on the rose of masculinity in online, Canadian and U.S. far-right extremist recruiting and radicalization, the development of radicalization and recruitment strategies, and how extremist communities conceptualize radicalization within their internal discourses.

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Fellow

Sarah Pledge Dickson

Sarah is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include far-right digital media publications, Canadian journalism and mis- and disinformation.

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Junior Fellow

Diana Wallens

Diana's research interests include the study of far-right extremist movements in Canada, the US, and Europe, particularly QAnon  conspiracists, Neo-Confederate, and Neo-Nazi groups. Currently, she is studying the parallels between the Canadian Trucker Convoy and the "Stop the Steal!" movement, as well as the history/future of the Groyper Army.

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Junior Fellow

E Sandau

E's research interests lie at the intersection of anti-2SLGBTQ+ movements and children's education. Amidst growing socio-political tensions surrounding gender, sexuality, and education in Canada, her current research examines how community-based literacy events serve as spaces of joy and solidarity which resist anti-2SLGBTQ+ narratives.

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Junior Fellow

Nur Helvali

Nur’s  research is focused on preventing violent extremism and countering terrorism mainly in the Middle East. She has previously worked on Jihadist terror groups and forced migration from the region. Currently,  she is working on the intersection of far-right extremism and Islamic terrorism.

Kelani Shuster

Junior Fellow

Kelani Shuster

Kelani’s research interests are centred around crisis and the scales and scopes of response to crisis. She is currently working in sexual assault response, youth consent facilitation and as an Intensive Support & Supervision Program worker with youth who are involved with the criminal justice system.

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Junior Fellow

Haniel Sorensen

Haniel Sorensen (he/him) is a master's candidate from Carleton University's Institute of Political Economy. Through his work, he hopes to help develop and contribute to the shared good of the human and more-than-human community—fostering a more robust and inclusive sense of love, community, care, and justice for all!

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Junior Fellow

Lily Polenchuk

Lily's research focuses on the relationship between democratic authority and religious authority, situated in conversation with pluralism and democratic fragility. She is particularly interested in how far-right movements in Alberta and the United States invoke religious authority within politics through divine revelation.

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Junior Fellow

Allison Vonk

Allison  Vonk (she/her) is a MA student with a background in psychology,  anthropology, and new media.  She is in an interdisciplinary MA program named Cultural, Social, and  Political Thought. Her research interests include the manosphere,  digital misogyny, and feminist content-creators. Currently, she is  researching how feminist content creators use counter-trolling  to combat misogyny online.

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Affiliate

Dan Collen

Dan is a co-creator of Hatepedia.ca. He is a researcher and educator of hate movements and disinformation in Canada who has reported on Canadian far-right, white supremacist and conspiracy movements since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dan’s research has focused on contemporary propaganda, including internet memes by far-right movements in Canada.

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Affiliate

Brent Saccucci

Brent Saccucci is a faculty member at ULethbridge and has taught teachers-candidates at UBC and UofA. He holds an MA from OISE/UToronto and is completing his doctorate in social justice education at Western University. Brent’s hallmark pluralism trainings recently earned him a 2025 Alberta Human Rights Champion award.

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Affiliate

Ruxi Gheorghe

Ruxi  M Gheorghe, MA, MSW, RSW, is a social worker and doctoral candidate at Carleton University's School of Social Work in Ottawa, Canada. Her doctoral research is concerned with articulations of toxic masculinity in direct therapeutic practice. Her broader research focus is on intersections between the online incel community, mental health, and exiting strategies.

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Affiliate

Alexandria C. Onuoha, PhD

Dr. Onuoha is a developmental scientist, professor, and creative whose interdisciplinary work is community-centered. Her research focuses on Black girls’ and women’s development, identity, and experiences of misogynoir, particularly in relation to far-right threats and political violence. She examines how structural inequities shape well-being using joy and community support.

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Affiliate

Mikey Lewis

Mikey Lewis is a queer and trans creative and researcher working on their M.A. in Child & Youth Studies at Brock University. Their current research examines how 2SLGBTQIA+ youth in Alberta are impacted by far-right politics, with a particular focus on creativity, community, and conceptualisations of the future.

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CIFRS

Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies

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l'Institut Canadien d'études sur l'extrême-droite

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*Note: prospective fellowship intake has been postponed until January 2027

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© 2025 by CIFRS; Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies

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