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About Amy Tucker

I am an interdisciplinary scholar with over 25 years of experience in higher education, including 19 years of teaching at Thompson Rivers University. My training and practice span the social sciences, organizational behaviour, leadership, human resource management, ethics, conflict resolution, and creativity and innovation. I came to research through teaching, and I came to teaching through a deep belief that the classroom is one of the few places where structural conditions can be named, examined, and, sometimes, changed.

As a doctoral candidate in the Doctor of Social Sciences program at Royal Roads University, I am conducting dissertation research that weaves together strategic management, organizational sociology, human resource management, leadership, ethics, and educational studies to investigate employment precarity in higher education. Through participatory visual research with international students and contract faculty, I have developed theoretical concepts including asymmetrical precarity, malperformative inclusion, and ghost data.

I also bring nearly ten years of labour relations experience, including service as Chair of the Non-Regular Faculty Committee with the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia, with certifications in collective bargaining and labour law. That governance work taught me that institutional change requires both the courage to name what is broken and the patience to build something better from the inside.

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What Is the Doctor of Social Sciences?

The Doctor of Social Sciences (DSocSci) is a professional doctoral degree offered by Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. It is designed for mid-career professionals who want to bring the rigour of academic research into direct conversation with real-world practice. Rather than preparing researchers for purely academic careers, the DSocSci develops scholar-practitioners: people who can think critically, conduct original research, and use what they learn to make meaningful change in their organizations, communities, and fields.

The program is interdisciplinary by design. Students come from diverse professional backgrounds and are expected to draw across disciplinary boundaries to address complex social problems. It is delivered through a blended model, combining online coursework with two intensive three-week residencies on campus at Royal Roads. Those residencies are where cohort relationships are built, ideas are tested, and the program’s intellectual community comes alive.

In this dissertation, I draw across six disciplines to address a problem no single field can fully hold: sociology, organizational behaviour, human resource management, leadership studies, business ethics, and education. Each discipline contributes a distinct way of seeing. Together, they make the argument. You can read more about how these disciplines work together on the Disciplines of This Study page.

The program takes approximately four years to complete and culminates in a dissertation that must make a distinct, original contribution to applied scholarship in the social sciences and be publicly defended by the student before an external examiner.

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Professional Background

For 19 years, I taught at Thompson Rivers University as a Contract Faculty member, offering courses in organizational behaviour, human resource management, business ethics, leadership, and diversity, primarily to international student populations. I designed curriculum, mentored students, served on faculty committees, and chaired the Non-Regular Faculty Committee for the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia. Since 2010, I have also served as an Online Faculty Member and Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition Assessor with Thompson Rivers University Open Learning.

In 2025, I served as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Centre for Creative Changemaking at Royal Roads University.

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Education

Doctor of Social Sciences Candidate, Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies · Royal Roads University (2017 to present) · Overall GPA: 3.94 · Recipient of the Royal Roads Student Experience Award

Master’s Candidate, Human Rights and Social Justice · Thompson Rivers University (2022 to 2025) · GPA: 4.0 · Recipient of the Kamloops Elizabeth Fry Award, 2023

Master of Arts, Leadership and Training · Royal Roads University

Provincial Instructor Diploma · British Columbia Institute of Technology

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What Is This Research About?

My dissertation examines what happens when contract faculty and international students occupy structurally similar positions inside the same institution. Both groups are precarious. Both belong conditionally. Both are subject to the same logics of renewal and expendability. And both are rarely studied together, even though their situations mirror each other in ways that matter deeply for how we understand Canadian higher education.

In May 2025, I received the Faculty Council Teaching Award at Thompson Rivers University. That same month, after twenty-five years of service, I was laid off. The research on this site grew out of that experience: theory grounded in lived practice rather than autobiography alone. I use my own story as the entry point into a larger structural analysis of how Canadian universities manage both the people who teach in them and the people they recruit to fill their classrooms.

This site organizes that research into three sections. Section One introduces me as a researcher, including my positionality, professional history, and theoretical commitments. Section Two presents the research itself, including the study design, methodology, literature review, and bibliography. Section Three, currently in development, goes deeper into the dissertation’s conceptual contributions, including the original concepts I have developed: asymmetrical precarity, malperformative inclusion, ghost data, blended witnessing, and performative silence.

How to Navigate This Site

Use the navigation menu at the top of the page to move between sections. If you are new to this research, I suggest beginning with About This Project for a brief overview, then Section One to understand who I am and why I am doing this work, and then Section Two for the formal research content.

Thank you for being here. This work is about people who are often unseen inside institutions that claim to see them. I am glad you are looking.

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Ethics approvals: Thompson Rivers University (H25-04204) and Royal Roads University (H25-00572)