Haven Clare Townsend has been awarded the distinguished Ali Tayyeb Scholarship in Geography for 2023-2024. Haven is pursuing a Specialist in International Development Studies and a Major in Human Geography. The Ali Tayyeb Scholarship in Geography is awarded to a student at UTSC who has demonstrated excellence of scholarship in one of the following fields (or related fields): Political Geography, Geography of Resources, Studies of Developing Nations or Canadian Studies. Professor Ali Tayyeb was one of two faculty members who started the Geography program at Scarborough College (now UTSC) in 1965 and the scholarship is generously provided by his family.
Haven Clare Townsend is a final year undergraduate at UTSC studying International Development and Human Geography. She is a researcher with the Quieting and Reclamation of UTSC Land project in the department of Sociology. She is a 2022-2023 CDHI Fellow and recipient of the 2023 UTEA Research Award, where she draws on the tools of legal geography to chart the legal norms and social relations that shaped the UTSC campus into place, from settler contact to present day. Her work includes developing interactive maps and GIS mobile tools tracing the history of Indigenous dispossession. Haven also serves as a Research Assistant for TMU'S Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, conducting interviews with young people, politicians, and service providers to understand the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on young caregivers across Canada. Haven is committed to dismantling systemic barriers that prevent marginalized youth from accessing essential services in a future career activating participatory and storytelling research. Drawing from lived experience, she recognizes how institutions perpetuate stigma and exclusion, specifically as it concerns young people. In her future work, she hopes to draw upon queer ethnographies, feminist geographies, and Indigenous knowledge in collaborative efforts which decolonize modern constructions of 'care'.