About Me
Welcome! I’m Benjamin Owens, a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. As an urban and economic geographer, my doctoral research examines the relationship between housing and work in the context of urban youth homelessness. Thinking with theories of ontological precarity, I am interested in how these dimensions of life intersect and co-produce in broader precarious life arrangements. I also explore how shelters, as sites of both living and work, shape unhoused youth’s experiences of formal and informal work and, contrariwise, how the work of unhoused youth (re)configures shelter geographies. This work builds on my years as a researcher in the youth homelessness sector, where I played a leadership role in a variety of participatory, community-engaged, and mixed methods projects on housing, harm reduction, and youth homelessness prevention.
In addition to my work with unhoused youth, I also maintain research interests in gender, sexuality, and labour in deindustrializing cities dating back to my MA and work as a researcher on the Work and Inclusion Project. My master's thesis, later adapted into an article for Work, Employment, and Society, demonstrated how customer violence can act as a form of labour control, disciplining non-normative gender and sexual expression in low-wage services. Subsequent research in this role considered the effects of work and deindustrialization on mental health, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods.