Dr. Evelyn Encalada Grez (she, her, ella) is a Latinx Assistant Professor in Labour Studies and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She is the co-founder of the award-winning collective, Justice for Migrant Workers, J4MW, that has advocated for the rights of migrant farmworkers in Canada and transnationally since 2001.

As a community engaged scholar and public sociologist Dr. Encalada Grez has mobilized her migrant-labour research through various media such as documentaries and given talks in venues such the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the United Nations in New York and in Parliament Hill, Ottawa.

Dr. Encalada Grez has also worked with export-processing workers throughout Mexico and Central America and as lead travelling faculty teaching social justice issues to university students from the USA in over 6 countries, from Jordan, India, Chile, Senegal and more. Before the pandemic, she was the Academic Director of an intensive study abroad program in local development and social justice for USAmerican university students in her city of birth, Valparaiso, Chile.

Dr. Encalada Grez's academic and political trajectories are driven by her own immigrant working class family’s experiences of displacement, imperialism, and racism. Inspired by national liberation movements and workers’ struggles throughout the globe, she became the first in her family to go to university and is now an academic committed to decolonializing and transformative pedagogies for structural change.

2018 Ph.D.
Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto
Dissertation: Mexican Women Organizing Love, Life, and Work: Transnational Storytelling from Rural Mexico and Canada
PDF download

LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Dissertation Award, Honorable Mention, 2018

2003 Master of Arts
Political Science, York University, Toronto
Thesis: Chile: Latin America’s ‘Free Market Miracle?’ Deconstructing Market Triumphalism in an Era of Mirages

1999 Teacher of English as a Second Language (TESL)
Trained as an ESL Teacher for Adult Learners through a post-graduate program at Humber College, Toronto.

1998 Bachelor of Arts
Honors in Political Science and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, York University, Toronto

1996 Avenues to Cuban Culture Summer School Program
Towards Honors BA, Universidad de Oriente, Santiago de Cuba

• Temporary Foreign Worker Programs in Canada

• Labor Migration

• Work, Gender, and Sexuality

• Race, Immigration, and Citizenship

• Latin American & Latinx Studies

• Transnational Ethnography

• Decolonizing and Transformative Pedagogies

• Community-Engaged Research

Warren Gill Award for Community Impact, Office of Community Engagement, Simon Fraser University, 2024, see link for more

Top 10 Most Influential Hispanics TLN: Telelatino Network, Canada, 2023 

CERi Emerging Community Engaged Researcher Award, Simon Fraser University, 2022, see link for more 

Awarded the distinction of the most influential Latin American-Canadians for academic and community work in the last 15 years, Correo Canadiense: El Periodico Hispano Bilingue de Canada, Canadian Spanish language newspaper October 13, 2016

Opening Doors Community Youth Award, Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples, Toronto, 2001

My global work as an educator and researcher has spanned the following countries and regions within:

Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jordan, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, Nicaragua, Senegal & the United States