Deborah MacDonald

Senior Research Associate & International Project Manager

Deborah MacDonald is the Senior Research Associate and International Project Manager at the Young Lives Research Lab (YLRL), where she supports the collaborative, participatory action research activities of Dr. Kate Tilleczek’s Tier I Canada Research Chair in Youth, Education, and Global Good. Deborah fosters connections and liaises with partners and participants across Canada, the Americas, and around the globe, contributing to the collaborative design, implementation, and evaluation of multidisciplinary research projects focused on the wellbeing of young people and their communities within various ecological and digital contexts. In collaboration with the vast team of YLRL, her work spans topics including re-imagining education, impacts and experiences of digital technology on young lives, and how young people in various contexts are navigating and responding to pressing social and environmental crises.

Since joining YLRL in 2015, Deborah has collaborated on numerous large-scale, international projects. She currently serves as the International Project Manager for multiple large-scale projects operating from YLRL, including the Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing, funded by York University’s inaugural Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters fund, which brings together researchers, youth, and community members in and across Canada, Belize, Costa Rica, and Chile to understand and address the intersections of personal and planetary wellbeing; Youth in the Digital Age (Phase II), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), a longitudinal study exploring how young people engage with and are impacted by digital technologies, focusing on their wellbeing, identities, and evolving relationships in an increasingly digital world; and Co-Developing the Digital Wellbeing Hub to Support Canadian Digital Citizenship, funded by Heritage Canada’s Digital Citizen Contribution Program, which is collaborating with young Canadians to develop Canada’s first comprehensive online repository to support improved digital citizenship for all Canadians.

Deborah is also a Co-Investigator for the Planetary Health Film Lab and the EdJAM-funded Accompong Maroon Youth Culture Camp and Memory Bank,

Her recent work includes managing the Wekimün School Project (2012-2018), a Global Affairs Canada-funded project based in the southern archipelago of Chiloé, Chile. Through this large-scale, transdisciplinary, intergenerational and intercultural collaboration the team co-created an Indigenous-focused, socially and culturally attuned curriculum with Williche communities of Chiloé, Chile, The resulting curriculum was awarded the Óscar Arnulfo Romero Ibero-American Prize for Human Rights Education and the resulting school, Wekimün Chilkatuwe, continues to operate with Chilean state funding and certification.

In partnership with Ryerson University, Deborah supported the Rights for Children and Youth Partnership to explore the impacts of education systems on human rights and youth wellbeing in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, as well as diaspora populations in Canada.

At York University, Deborah supports the groundbreaking work of the YLRL team, including Post Doctoral Fellow, Dr. Roxanne Cohen (Rooted and Rising), Filmmaker in Residence, Dr. Mark Terry (Planetary Health Film Lab), Senior Research Associate, Dr. Jim Stinson (New Journey to Save Fish: Oshki Maadaadiziwin Jaa Bimaaji’ut Gigooyike), and International Visiting Research Fellow Pablo Aránguiz Mesías (Decolonizing Planetary Health through Williche Ecologies of Repair). She also collaborates with organizations such as the Students Commission of Canada, UNICEF Canada and Young People’s Sustainable Futures Lab, contributing to a wide array of emerging projects.

Deborah holds a Master of Communication from the University of Queensland, Australia, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Contact Deborah MacDonald: dmacd@yorku.ca

Associations

Code Red Alliance for Children and Youth

Select Publications

Tilleczek, K. Montoya, F., Aránguiz, P.,Stinson, J.,Cohen, R., MacDonald, D. & Luján, K.  (2024, May). Examining planetary wellbeing alongside youth and communities in the Americas. Paper presented at the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 2024 Congress: Uncertainty as Opportunity: Beyond Polarization and Inequalities, Montréal, Québec, May 29-31, 2024.

Tilleczek, K. C., & MacDonald, D. M. (2023). Youth, education and wellbeing in the Americas. Routledge (Taylor and Francis) Publishing.

Tilleczek, K.; Terry, M.; MacDonald, D.; Orbinski, J.; Stinson, J. (2023) Towards youth-centred planetary health education. Challenges. Special Issue: Planetary Health. 14, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/challe14010003

Tilleczek, K. (2022). Youth as educational revolutionaries: Dispatches from the Americas. In Kate Tilleczek and Deborah MacDonald (Eds.) Youth, education, and wellbeing in the Americas. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Aranguiz, P., Tilleczek, K., & MacDonald, D. (2022). We are all Children of Mapu Ñuke: Anticolonial education with/by/for youth wellbeing. In Peter Kelly et. al. (Eds.) Young people and stories of/for the Anthropocene. London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield.

Aranguiz, P., Tilleczek, K., & MacDonald, D. (2022). Wekimün School: Education with/by/for Indigenous youth and communities in Chile. In Kate Tilleczek and Deborah MacDonald (Eds.) Youth, education, and wellbeing in the Americas. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.