Conscientious Feminist Research in Gender, Health and Global Development

I am a feminist health researcher with expertise in reproductive justice, global development, social determinants of health, and gender based violence.

I am a former postdoctoral researcher in the department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. My research analyzed Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) from the perspectives of reproductive justice, biopolitics, and neoliberal governmentality. Specifically, I am interested in how the FIAP conceptualizes sexual and reproductive health and rights, and how these conceptualizations intersect with understandings of women’s empowerment and sustainable development. Ultimately, my research interrogates how dominant frameworks employed by FIAP impact the ways in which reproductive health and rights are pursued.

I completed my PhD in the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at the University of Western Ontario. My SSHRC funded doctoral research examined Canada's Maternal, Newborn and Child Health development policy under the Muskoka Initiative.

My work is informed by the theoretical concepts of biopolitics, governmentality and reproductive justice, and is driven by a commitment to feminist principles in both research and practice. My broader research interests include representations of motherhood; discourses of maternity and female sexuality; adolescent girlhood; and the discursive construction of 'development' in policy and the public imagination. I have taught in the department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, and the Department of Health Sciences at Western University, and in the Social Justice and Peace Studies Program and the department of Political Science at King’s University College.