Mary Victor Kostandy

Educational Projects and Digital Content Strategist, Office of Respectful Environments, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, UBC Faculty of Medicine;
Ph.D. Candidate, Educational Studies;
Initiative Lead, The Diverse Career Paths of Educational Studies Alumni.

Mary is a Ph.D. Candidate in EDST. Her doctoral research follows a digital movement of Egyptian teachers on Facebook, which mobilizes for the economic, social and political reform of the teaching profession. She examines Egyptian teachers’ online discourses on one of the most active public Teacher Facebook groups (with close to 1/4 million members) on World Teachers’ day. She focuses on teachers’ calls for justice and the reforms they advocate for. Her work is inspired by Nancy Fraser’s social justice framework, a three-pronged approach that allows for analysis across economic, cultural and political domains (Fraser, 2005). Mary’s analysis of the Arabic posts is informed by her positionality as an Egyptian Arabic speaker who has worked as a teacher and a teacher educator in Egypt. 

Mary received her MA in International and Comparative Education and her BSc in Computer Science, both from the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. 

She is a co-investigator and the Initiative Lead for the Diverse Career Paths of Educational Studies Alumni. The initiative is funded by the Faculty of Education Advancing Learning Transformed grant and the UBC Advancing Education Renewal Grant. It aims to draw on Educational Studies (EDST) alumni’s career experiences to support graduate students in exploring diverse career pathways.

She is also a Graduate Assistant to the Senior Advisor to the President on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence.