Meet the new Chair of Women's and Gender Studies, Talia Welsh!

After to a busy start to the new term, we caught up with new Chair, Talia Welsh.  She bring considerable knowledge and acumen to the Department.  Read more below:

Could you tell us a little bit about your professional background, and what you’ve enjoyed the most about your career so far?

After completing a B.A. in philosophy and business at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA, USA), I studied at Stony Brook University (State University of New York) and at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Wuppertal, Germany) for my Ph.D. in philosophy. Prior to coming to the University of Alberta, I was a Professor and Department Head of Philosophy & Religion at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and the Director of Integrated Studies. I have also served as the Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UTC. 

It's hard to say what I like most--at the top of the list is living a life filled with curiosity and having the time and resources to investigate such curious matters with other people.

 What inspired you to enter this field?

I started studying philosophy because I loved how it opened up more questions than it closed. All the other subjects I took seemed finite. One question that really appealed to me was the one of--why do we do irrational things? This later changed into the question of how we think about our lives and how we experience our lives are often at odds--why is that?  It was getting into feminist studies that really helped me think more deeply about these questions--how we can live in a world that is in principle equal with people all saying they value equality, but how little this is reflected in experience. 

Tell us about your research?

I research the embodied and developmental nature of human beings, how we change over time and how our health, illness, and dependency is intertwined with our self-knowledge. One area of my research focuses on pregnancy, child rearing, and child development and how these aspects of our experience, essential to who we are, are often passed over in theories of what it means to be human. Central to this discussion is research on how what we consider knowledge has deep embodied aspects that are prior to what we normally call thinking. My research also looks into how certain ideas of health and wellness today have increasingly come to shape our sense of responsibility for our behaviors and how this responsibility is held in vastly different ways for different groups of society. 

Tell us about your teaching?

We often ask students what they want to do and what they want to learn. While these are good questions, they limit our curiosity since perhaps there are things to know or do or live that we haven't encountered. 

In teaching, I like to assign readings of authors to expand students' knowledge and to see how these authors expanded what is possible to think and to do.  

What are your impressions of Edmonton/the University of Alberta so far?

I have a history with Edmonton that is not my experience, but that of my family. My parents are both from Edmonton and went to the University of Alberta, but I grew up around the world and did my post-secondary education largely in the United States. It certainly is serendipitous to have come back to a place where I have roots. My family and I have really loved living here so far--the biking is amazing and there are too many cultural events to go to every weekend. 

What are your hobbies, or things you like to do outside of work?

I love to read literature and have a particular fondness for mysteries. I'm interested in so many things--hiking, biking, gardening, playing piano, cooking, thrifting, learning how to play a new video game--that I have never become very good at any of them.

Welcome to the Department, Talia!