Janna Martin (she/her) conducts research and evaluation on a variety of topics across different sectors utilizing qualitative and mixed methods. Her passion is working alongside organizations to advance equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. She was hired in 2018 as a Centre Researcher and moved into a Senior Researcher role in 2025. Beyond research reports and academic articles, Janna has led knowledge mobilization outputs such as community forums, photovoice, podcasts, infographics, website design, and the development of a scene in a community play.

 

Janna is a passionate adult educator. She has facilitated learning in a variety of settings. In Winter 2025, Janna was a sessional lecturer in Social Development Studies and taught the third-year course, “Community Engagement and Social Development.” She also teaches in CCBR’s Certificate Program of Community-Based Research, affiliated with the University of Waterloo. In her University of Guelph lab, Janna mentors undergraduate and master’s students in various research skills such as qualitative data analysis, writing conference abstracts, and developing research proposals. In her work with CCBR, Janna regularly facilitates customized workshops, trainings, and one-on-one mentoring to build community-based research capacity.        

 

Janna’s lifelong interest is in the connection between collective narrative, identity, and social change. In this regard, Janna has led projects on topics such as polarization on the university campus, urban heritage of equity-deserving communities, and the co-curation of a story of Indigenous presence in Guelph. Janna’s academic background is in Sociology (BA), Peace and Conflict Studies (MPACS), and Social Practice and Transformational Change (PhD). She has published articles in Settler Colonial Studies, the Engaged Scholar Journal, and the Journal of Mennonites Studies. Janna holds a Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 

Janna is a white settler of Swiss-Mennonite ancestry. She lives in Guelph, Ontario and she grew up in the Waterloo Region, close to where her ancestors first settled on Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract (land promised to the Six Nations and ancestral land of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation). Her ancestor’s settlement (Mennonites from Pennsylvania) in the early 19th century contributed to the erasure and dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land and way of life. Her PhD aims to braid Indigenous and Mennonite histories in the Waterloo Region to develop a new public history methodological approach for settler decolonization. She is working alongside Mennonite history and heritage organizations to support their unsettling learning journey of truth-telling towards reconciliation. Additionally, she is working with her PhD advisor, Dr. Kim Anderson (a Metis historian) and the Decolonizing Place Narratives team to co-curate an Indigenous story of Guelph (read more).

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See Janna's CV here.

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