![Picture](/uploads/2/6/3/0/26301422/published/meinalicante.jpg?1658341769)
Life started in Canada. Susan was born and raised in Scarborough, and the Greater Toronto Area was home until 2008. Since then she has lived and worked in the Netherlands, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Morocco. She enjoyed a challenging career as an educator in both the classroom and various administrative roles at the secondary and post-secondary level. Susan has always welcomed the opportunity to position herself as a student among students. While teaching internationally, she created projects to foster primary and secondary research skills across the curriculum, the IBDP Extended Essay, and Capstone Projects (American Diploma). This was a task begun in Canada while teaching at-risk students and early school leavers, as a means to find the magic that would keep them engaged and on-track for graduation and a future of their choosing.
Across this career, she notes that her greatest achievement, is the point where her research interests intersected with her teaching practice: her final years teaching in Canada when she designed and implemented provincially-funded programming for students designated "at-risk". What she found early was that they were what she terms "bad-ass geeks" - cerebral and inquisitive students who did not see school connected to a future they envisioned for themselves. From 2005-2008, she and her students attended class on the campuses of Durham College (Oshawa) and St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto. Most, like Susan, went on to be the first post-secondary graduates in their families. Many have hunted her down to share the stories of their successes academically and in other areas of life.
Her post-graduate studies and research are interdisciplinary, and fall under the larger umbrella of Social Sciences. She completed her Master of Arts in Integrated Studies from Athabasca University (Alberta) with a specialisation in Educational Studies and Global Change. Her capstone project addressed the impact of colonialism on education in Ireland prior to independence. Her doctoral studies were completed at University College Cork, across the disciplines of Sociology, Social Policy, and Governance. Her dissertation served as the foundation for The Shawlies. She has presented her research at international conferences in Europe and Canada.
At the start of the pandemic she was in Morocco and, across 2020 and 2021, she navigated teaching remotely, travel restrictions, and a repatriation to Canada with two street cats she rescued in Saudi Arabia, to help care for her octogenarian father under the collapse of Ontario's healthcare and home-care systems. An Irish citizen and a Canadian citizen, she currently divides her time between the two countries.
Across this career, she notes that her greatest achievement, is the point where her research interests intersected with her teaching practice: her final years teaching in Canada when she designed and implemented provincially-funded programming for students designated "at-risk". What she found early was that they were what she terms "bad-ass geeks" - cerebral and inquisitive students who did not see school connected to a future they envisioned for themselves. From 2005-2008, she and her students attended class on the campuses of Durham College (Oshawa) and St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto. Most, like Susan, went on to be the first post-secondary graduates in their families. Many have hunted her down to share the stories of their successes academically and in other areas of life.
Her post-graduate studies and research are interdisciplinary, and fall under the larger umbrella of Social Sciences. She completed her Master of Arts in Integrated Studies from Athabasca University (Alberta) with a specialisation in Educational Studies and Global Change. Her capstone project addressed the impact of colonialism on education in Ireland prior to independence. Her doctoral studies were completed at University College Cork, across the disciplines of Sociology, Social Policy, and Governance. Her dissertation served as the foundation for The Shawlies. She has presented her research at international conferences in Europe and Canada.
At the start of the pandemic she was in Morocco and, across 2020 and 2021, she navigated teaching remotely, travel restrictions, and a repatriation to Canada with two street cats she rescued in Saudi Arabia, to help care for her octogenarian father under the collapse of Ontario's healthcare and home-care systems. An Irish citizen and a Canadian citizen, she currently divides her time between the two countries.