Encountering Expertise in Intersectional Health Series - Framing Women's Health through a Decolonial, Intersectional lens: Reflections from research on gendered and sexual violence

Join Intersections of Gender and Women and Children’s Health Research Institute for a look at decolonial & intersectional research design!

This event will take place at 9 A.M. MDT and 5 P.M. South African Standard Time (GMT+2).

Part III of the Encountering Expertise in Intersectional Health Series

The Encountering Expertise in Intersectional Health Series is jointly organized by UAlberta's Women and Children’s Health Research Institute and the Intersections of Gender Signature Area. In four sessions, panelists from health sciences, social sciences, and humanities come together to provide introductory, theoretical and methodological, applied, and grant-oriented information about how health research and researchers do, can, and should use an intersectional lens for more dynamic, informative, and impactful research.

In this session, we welcome esteemed Professor of Psychology, Dr. Floretta Boonzaier (University of Cape Town) to focus on how women's health research and outcomes benefit from the lenses of decolonialism and of intersectionality, particularly as they relate to gendered and sexual violence. This conversation will be hosted by Dr. Colleen Norris (University of Alberta), Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Nursing and Cavarzan Chair in Mature Women's Health, Faculty of Medicine and Women and Children's Health Research Institute, and expert in women's heart health.

Floretta Boonzaier is Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, and co-Director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa. She is also the incoming President of the Psychological Society of South Africa. She is noted for her work in feminist, critical and postcolonial psychologies, her research on subjectivity in relation to race, gender and sexuality, and her work on gendered and sexual violence, and decolonial research methodologies. She is an Associate Editor for the South African Journal of Science and past Editor in Chief for the journal Psychology in Society. She is a past UCT Mandela Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and a past recipient of the runner up award in the South African Department of Science and Technology’s Women in Science awards, for the category of Distinguished Young Woman Researcher in the Social Sciences or Humanities. She serves on the Board of Mosaic Training, Service and Healing Centre for Women in Cape Town and the African Gender Institute and Huma Institute at the University of Cape Town. Her recent publications include the co-edited volumes Engaging youth in activism, research and pedagogical praxis: Transnational and intersectional perspectives on gender, sex and race (Routledge, 2018), Decolonial Feminist Community Psychology (Springer, 2019 ), Men, Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence (Routledge, 2020) and the co-authored book, Pan-Africanism and Psychology in Decolonial Times (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

Dr. Colleen Norris is a Professor and Clinician Scientist with University of Alberta’s Faculties of Nursing, Medicine, and School of Public Health, Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Nursing, UAlberta, and Cavarzan Chair in Mature Women's Health, Faculty of Medicine, UAlberta and Women and Children's Health Research Institute. Her PhD is in clinical epidemiology. Dr. Norris, a nurse by training, completed post-doctoral training with the Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team (CCORT) and Tomorrows Outcome Researchers in Cardiovascular Health (TORCH) in health outcomes research and developed the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcome Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) follow-up program. Dr. Norris is the former Scientific Director of the Cardiovascular Health and Stroke Strategic Clinical Network for Alberta Health Services. Her program of research focuses on the sex and gender factors that impact women’s heart health. She is the past Chair of the Canadian Women’s Heart Health Alliance (CWHHA) Health Policy and Services (HP&S) working group, whose mandate is to implement policies that advance our understanding of the unique sex and gender factors affecting the outcomes of women’s heart health. She is a committee member on the Women’s Heart and Brain Health Network Research Steering Committee, and is actively involved in advancing sex and gender-based analysis and reporting in Heart & Stroke funded research. In 2018, Dr. Norris was designated as the sex and gender champion on the CCS clinical guidelines committee where she established and published a methodology that is used to incorporate sex and gender specific information into CCS clinical practice guidelines. Dr. Norris is a Fellow of the American Heart Association and the CO-PI in a CIHR/GENDER-NET Plus research project- GOING-FWD, an international collaborative of researchers from five countries, evaluating the impact of sex and gender factors on outcomes. Dr. Norris has mentored over 80 students/trainees. She has presented extensively and has over 300 publications in the areas of sex and gender differences in cardiovascular treatment and outcomes, and women’s heart health.