Natalya Brown

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Nipissing University

In the Northern Ontario communities of North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, and Timmins, immigrants have organized and run cricket clubs. Using a social inclusion framework, we surveyed players and conducted interviews with players and sponsors to ascertain their perspectives on the impact of cricket on newcomer social inclusion. We f...

Pre-COVID-19 pandemic years have seen an increase in experience-related services such as travel, events, or creative pursuits. Spending on such services increased four times faster than those on goods, signaling shifts in consumer behavior (Goldman et al., 2017). Due to COVID-19, nations restricted mass gatherings, limiting group activities. Large...

This paper examines business philosophies, sustainable practices, and attitudes towards eco-certification of pio-neering tourism operators engaged in ecotourism in the mature ‘sun and beach’ destination of Jamaica. We conducted a thematic analysis of the data collected from semi-structured interviews with managers and owners, and observations from...

Sport has the ability to both produce and counter racism, and should therefore be studied and understood more fully (Carrington and McDonald 2001). Previous studies have demonstrated the role that sport and recreation can play in the settlement and social inclusion of immigrants (e.g., Lee and Funk 2011; Kim et al. 2016; Taylor 2004; Vancouver Foun...

The Settlement Program of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada identifies newcomers’ integration into Canadian society as key to the successful realization of the economic, social, and cultural benefits of immigration (IRCC, 2019). The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot is a community-driven program that is specifically designed t...

Nature-, adventure-, and ecotourism (NEAT), often referred to as any kind of nature-related tourism, is recognized by the Government of the Republic of Armenia (Armenia) as a promising niche for tourism development. In light of the growing importance of the NEAT industry in Armenia, it is important to understand factors behind domestic and foreign...

Most research on common book programs focuses on student outcomes. This paper presents a study about the impact of a common book program on teaching and learning practices at a small mainly undergraduate university. This study consists of two phases. In Phase 1, we surveyed faculty members (N= 32, a response rate of 21.3%), about the influence of t...

Students in a small university in Ontario, Canada were surveyed about the lasting impact of the common book program from three years previous. Results indicate that the common book had a small impact on critical thinking and essay writing skills. The book program, however, had little to no lasting impact on them as readers, listeners, or speakers,...

This article discusses the use of Common Book and Tablet programs in post-secondary business education. We highlight methods by which each program enhances information literacy and integrative learning. We demonstrate how these programs can enhance students' communication and collaboration skills and enhance employability. We discuss classroom acti...

Teaching financial literacy is important at all stages of life, but is often neglected with elementary students. In this article, the authors describe a strategy for teaching financial literacy using the books about Max and Ruby by Rosemary Wells. These books can help introduce the five key concepts of financial literacy: scarcity, exchange, money,...

We explore smartphone utilization by tourists from 24 countries visiting either Rome, Italy or Athens, Greece. By extending a standard technology acceptance model, we identify common travel uses for smartphones, which include taking photos, social networking, viewing maps, finding transportation and searching for shops and restaurants. Younger coho...

A university-community choir is a hybrid of an institutional choir and a community choir, facilitating the creation, consumption, and sharing of art, culture, knowledge, and wealth between its various stakeholder groups. We surveyed and interviewed a variety of stakeholders of a university-community choir to illuminate the mutually bene cial relati...

Adequate, suitable and affordable housing is one of the basic needs that must be successfully attained in the process of immigrant integration into a community. This case study consisting of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with new immigrants and landlords centres particularly on the housing experiences of immigrants in North Bay, a sma...

In this qualitative study, we outline the process through which a book was selected for a university common reading program. By observing committee meetings and interviewing committee members, we identified five issues and tensions that arose when selecting a book: academic rigor vs. student engagement; increasing student involvement in the process...

Many post-secondary common book programs purport to increase a sense of community on campus. This study explored whether a common book program at a Canadian university was able to create a sense of community among students. Results indicate that in-class discussions about the book, liking the Facebook page, attending the author lecture, and watchin...

Formal models of elections typically assume that voters are sure of their ideal points on the policy spectrum. Meanwhile, the empirical evidence suggests that voters are often uncertain about their ideal positions. In addition, alienation appears to play a key role in explaining voter turnout in elections. Using a spatial model that incorporates ab...

This article reports on student surveys and faculty interviews with regard to a university pilot project of a common book program for first year students. We found that a minority of students read the book and the book was integrated into only some faculty members’ courses. First-year students varied in their perceptions of the impact the project...

In this paper, I present a model of candidate entry into a two-tiered hierarchy of political positions with the objective of exploring the extent to which term limits at lower level political positions alter the average skill of office-seekers for higher level political positions. In addition, this paper analyzes whether the increase in political s...

The authors analyzed curricula from all 61 Canadian undergraduate business programs and found that business schools that contain economics departments, business schools with higher mathematics and statistics requirements, and business schools that have received Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business accreditation are more likely to r...

I present a spatial model analyzing the effect on candidates' policy choices when there is a positive relationship between extremism in policy choice and certainty in policy choice among the electorate. Formal models of elections typically assume that voters are sure of their ideal points on the policy spectrum. I argue that candidate divergence ma...