We're very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Bradley Seward, Assistant Professor, teaching stream, starting officially in July 2024, and Dr. Kourtney Koebel, Assistant Professor, tenure stream, starting officially in July 2025.
Brad joined the CIRHR in 2020 as the former Project Director of the Research Initiative, Education + Skills (RIES). His research covers a range of topics including education, skills, school to work transitions and labour market outcomes, human capital, and workplace diversity and inclusion. His work has been shared on the CBC, the Globe and Mail, 570 News Radio, and TVO’s The Agenda. More recently, Brad’s interests have focused on the future of education for the future of work, with an emphasis on the role of artificial intelligence in higher education. Brad has also held positions as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nipissing University, and as a Senior Human Resources Researcher at the Conference Board of Canada.
"From the moment I first joined the CIRHR, I knew the Centre was where I wanted to be," says Brad. "I feel so fortunate to be able to continue teaching our students and helping them achieve the success they deserve. I greatly look forward to being a resource to students and my colleagues—my door is always open."
Kourtney is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Economics, University of Toronto and the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In September, she will begin as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stone Centre for the Study of Wealth Inequality at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Her research interests include the evaluation of labour/social policy, the social determinants of labour supply (particularly, among mothers and low-wage workers), and using multi-disciplinary insights to re-conceputalize how we think about “work”, both culturally and in the design of policy. She is also interested in gender equality and poverty.
"Words cannot express how excited I am to join the CIRHR as a faculty member in 2025," says Kourtney. "During my PhD, the Centre exposed me to a diversity of multi-disciplinary ideas that complimented, and built upon, the tools and methods I learned in my prior Political Science and Economics graduate degrees. The faculty and students at the Centre provided an incredibly supportive and motivating research environment that significantly contributed my development as a researcher and teacher. I am so pleased to have the opportunity to return as a faculty member and, not only continue to learn from and collaborate with an amazing multidisciplinary group of scholars, but also to provide the same mentorship to future cohorts of students that I myself received at the CIRHR."