Gillian Lemermeyer

Gillian Lemermeyer, PhD, RN is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, Canada. Gillian's research explores the embodied ethics of healthcare practices, investigating questions situated in the relational encounters between nurses and other healthcare practitioners with the people in their care. Her research program is focused on themes of relational ethics, the nurse’s touch, and the ethics of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Methodological approaches include phenomenology and other qualitative methods. Current projects include the technoethics of electronic health record systems and other research projects have explored the nurse’s touch in the NICU, the effects of AI and other digital technologies in K-12 education and the experience of families in the NICU. Her nursing background is in neonatal intensive care, family bereavement, and professional regulation. Her teaching practice is in healthcare ethics with undergraduate and graduate students and qualitative research methods.

Research Program

The central notion of my research program is that the way we are with each other matters. This idea is grounded in an ethics of inclusion in a changing world and is situated in the close interface between nurses and other healthcare practitioners with the people in their care. I focus on themes such as the lived body (of patient and practitioner), relational ethics, human touch, and the ethics of artificial intelligence in healthcare.