It is with deep sadness and sorrow that we note the passing of our esteemed Graduate Associate, Megan Whitney. Megan lived graciously and courageously with cancer until the very end. We at YCAR had the privilege to work close with Megan. A PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Geography, Megan served as Student Representative on the YCAR Executive Committee (2020–23). She also volunteered in the Membership Committee and was committed to building a strong community for the Centre.
Megan was not only a dedicated member, but she was also a brilliant early-career scholar. She was the recipient of Penny and John Van Esterik Award for Graduate Research on Southeast Asia (2020), the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship (2022), and the YCAR Language Award (2022). The Award Committee commanded her “interdisciplinary strength and impressive theoretical composite to address issues of elephant trekking industries in Thailand.” Megan was dedicated to the course of animals’ well-being and the struggles of marginalized labour and workers in the animal tourism industry. Megan is also fondly remembered for her joyous spirit. We’ll miss her heart-warm greetings, such as “hope you’re all having a great Summer,” “hope you’re all having a good snow day” and “Happy Holiday!”
Two of our Faculty Associates kindly shared their memories of Megan.
Megan Whitney was a delight to work with as her PhD supervisor. She was not only a creative and passionate researcher, she was always cheerful, and a person who cared deeply for her human and nonhuman communities. I always came away from our meetings feeling very excited for her and her research. This past summer she was very happy that finally everything had come together and she was going to Thailand to do her research with mahouts and elephants. Even when she let me know that she would not be able to go after all due to the diagnosis, she was still making a huge effort to be positive. Despite what she described as a very challenging illness, we talked about how she would take a year off to get better, return to her program, and go to Thailand. Megan made the world a better place with how she spread her kindness and positive energy to everyone around her. We all miss her greatly.
—Peter Vandergeest, Geography, EUC
I am recounting my memory with Megan with a heavy heart. It was utterly shocking and sad to hear about Megan’s passing. Our community lost a talented and promising junior scholar and a lovely soul.
Megan took the GDAS course when I taught it in 2019, and I also had the pleasure of supervising her MRP. It was not hard to notice her brilliance right away both in and outside the class. Megan was a deep thinker and a gifted writer. Also, when I first met her, she already had a solid knowledge of a range of critical theories, but she was still passionate about exploring different theoretical terrains. And, Megan did not simply take learned theories but questioned them and developed her own ideas. She drew inspiration from her field and the people that she met there. The field – in her case, the wildlife preservation communities in Thailand – was an unfathomable source of her wisdom, and it is from here that she developed a postcolonial and anticolonial critique of wildlife conservation practices. She challenged Eurocentrism structuring the “technological fix” approach advocated by Western preservation NGOs, and looked for alternatives emanating from the standpoints of the people in Thailand who have lived with and cared for animals there.
I learned a great deal from Megan’s research, and always enjoyed reading her writing and looked forward to the next ones. I wasn’t the only one, though. Others also recognized the significance of her work and the great potential of her as a promising student-scholar. For example, Megan’s MRP was enthusiastically recommended by her defense committee as one with distinction in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. Her research also received critical recognition from YCAR, the OGS scholarship committee and other institutions.
While she was brilliant in every intellectual respect, she was also a modest, reflexive, collegial and warm-hearted person. She was at times shy, but always adamant about social justice. What drove her research, it seemed, was her compassion for animals and solidarity with people who were experiencing the devastating impact of Western imperial capitalism.
The last day that I saw Megan in person, although we had occasional email communications since then, was in a mid-town park in Fall 2020. We celebrated her completion of the MRP defense and her admission to the geography PhD program at York. It was a nice sunny day, as bright as we expected the upcoming new chapter of her life to be. We had a nice chat sitting on a bench. She gave me a book (a novel) as a thank-you present on that day. That book currently on my shelf as well as any sunny autumn day, will remind me of the nice, delightful time and space that I had with Megan.
Megan will remain in loving memory for many of us who were fortunate to get to know her in her life. I wish her peace now, and hope that her life inspires us long and widely.
—Laam Hae, Politics
A memorial is being planned for early January 2024 and we will share details once they are known.
We extend our deepest sympathies to her family and friends in our community.
Should you need support during this time then please reach out to York University Counselling Services.