Field research / Public systems / Applied policy

Policy begins where people meet systems.

I study the distance between how institutions design programs and how people experience them, using field research, policy interpretation, program practice, and writing to make that distance visible.

View selected investigations
FieldListen closely
SystemTrace the rules
DecisionMake evidence usable

Questions I'm working on

A practice organized by inquiry.

These are active questions, not finished positions. Each connects evidence already gathered with work that remains to be done.

01
Institutions & lived experience

What gets lost when consultation is treated as data collection?

Gastown research / Field essay02
Work & mobility

What does Canada actually mean by skill?

Workforce programs / Migration essay03
Care & accountability

When does compliance strengthen a program, and when does it narrow care?

Squamish Nation / Program practice04
Safety & public space

Who is permitted to define safety in a contested place?

Gastown / Open inquiry

Selected investigations

Public questions, followed all the way through.

Each case moves from lived experience to institutional structure to a decision someone could actually make.

01Gastown, Vancouver

What happens when the same street is described as two different crises?

Businesses emphasized safety and public disorder. Service providers emphasized poverty, harm reduction, and the absence of low-barrier support. The shared failure was not a lack of concern. It was the lack of a reliable communication system between the groups responding to the same street.

  • 16 service providers
  • 36 businesses
  • Mixed methods
  • Direct canvassing
Field
Conflicting experiences of public space
System
Fragmented municipal, business, and outreach response
Decision
A shared communication protocol
02Squamish Nation

How does a funded program remain accountable without losing sight of the person?

Workforce programs carry two responsibilities at once: support participants through real barriers and satisfy the rules attached to public funding. I built the operational systems that held intake, progress, safety records, vendors, and reporting together across concurrent programs.

  • 5 programs
  • 4–5 agreements
  • Audit readiness
  • Excel dashboards
Field
Participants navigating practical barriers
System
Eligibility, safety, funding, and reporting requirements
Decision
Usable workflows that preserved both care and compliance
03British Columbia

The pass rate is not the outcome.

BCTA's MELT analysis raises a useful next question: does a higher first-attempt road-test pass rate translate into consistent training, first-job readiness, and early safety performance? This independent note proposes a carrier evidence protocol to find out.

  • Regulatory scan
  • Evaluation design
  • Carrier pulse
  • Decision framework
Field
Carrier and newly licensed driver experience
System
Training, licensing, onboarding, and safety oversight
Decision
A lean thirty-day evaluation pilot
04Jharkhand, India

When violence is explained as superstition, what disappears from view?

A self-funded field study examined witch-hunting not as an isolated belief but as violence shaped by land, inheritance, caste, widowhood, poverty, and women's refusal to remain socially legible.

  • 100+ interviews
  • 150+ surveys
  • Field research
  • Human-rights analysis
Field
Testimony from women and community actors
System
Gender, property, social power, and institutional protection
Decision
An explanation grounded in evidence rather than folklore

Current policy note / Transportation

The pass rate is not the outcome.

A practical framework for evaluating whether BC's Mandatory Entry-Level Training program produces consistent training, work-ready graduates, and a system that learns from carrier evidence.

26,873road tests examined by BCTA
63%post-MELT first-attempt pass rate
4proposed evaluation lenses

Independent concept note based on public aggregate information. It does not claim completed primary research or assess individual providers.

From the field / 01

Gastown, Vancouver / 2024

One observation. One policy question. Evidence still needed.

Agreement was hiding inside the disagreement.

Observed tension
Businesses described safety and disorder. Service providers described poverty, harm reduction, and insufficient low-barrier support.
Closer finding
Both groups identified a failure of rapid, dependable communication between businesses and outreach teams.
Policy question
Can a shared operating protocol create progress when ideological consensus is unlikely?
Evidence needed next
Response-time data, incident pathways, participant interviews, and a limited protocol pilot.

Evidence status: Field observation drawn from a mixed-methods project with 16 service providers and 36 businesses. The proposed protocol remains a recommendation, not an evaluated intervention.

Explore by theme

Different forms. Recurring concerns.

01

Institutions and lived experience

Where the administrative account and the human account stop matching.

  • Squamish Nation programs
  • The first explanation
  • Invited, Then Asked to Leave
02

Belonging and public space

How safety, care, authority, and visibility are negotiated in shared places.

  • Gastown research
  • Public-space inquiry
  • Four Names for the Same Water
03

Work, mobility and opportunity

How institutions recognize skill, distribute opportunity, and produce exclusion.

  • Workforce programming
  • Jharkhand fieldwork
  • Before You Come to Canada

Ideas & writing

Arguments, poems, and questions still being worked through.

Explore the complete library
Public essay

More than stewards

Indigenous leadership, clean-energy labour, and what a more honest transition conversation must admit.

Field essay

The first explanation is never the complete explanation

What field research in Jharkhand and observation in Vancouver taught me about explanations that make systems comfortable.

Open question

What does Canada actually mean by skill?

An inquiry into occupational classification, migration, and the administrative production of deskilling.

Poetry

Burning Dry

A published poem on nation, identity, violence, and the colours made to carry them.

Photography

Observation before explanation.

Photographs are not decoration for the policy work. They are a separate practice of attention, context, and memory.

A field interview taking place beneath a veranda in Jharkhand
Jharkhand / field research / 2022
A long black-and-white corridor after rain in Delhi
Delhi / after rain
A lived-in room with a desk, books, maps, and a framed photograph
A Room Held / private archive

About the practice

I work between the field note and the briefing note.

I am a Vancouver-based policy researcher and writer with experience in program implementation, stakeholder engagement, regulatory interpretation, mixed-methods research, and public communication.

My work has moved through Indigenous workforce programming, homelessness and public-space policy, maternal-health access, gender-based violence, and sustainable development. Across those contexts, the question remains consistent: how can institutions understand people without reducing them to what a form, metric, or funding agreement can hold?

yatindua144@gmail.comLinkedInSubstackVancouver, British Columbia