Ella Hunter recently presented her honours thesis research at St Francis Xavier University’s Student Research Day 2026. Her research used two different board games to explore how future healthcare workers understand the social and structural determinants of health. Her research also seeks to help inform optimization of game design to teach future health professionals. She had a very busy evening!
Erica Burke presented some of her RA qualitative analysis work with TRRU.ca’s Public Health Governance project at StFX Student Research Day on March 24th
Erica Burke recently presented her work as a research assistant at St Francis Xavier University’s Student Research Day 2026. Her research poster aimed to reject Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, along with current reactionary structures based on meeting bare minimum needs, in favour of a more holistic approach to public health care and governance. She used focus group testimonies to inform her argument that Public Health must not only enable but also embolden the conditions in which the individual and community can thrive.
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Themes from Community Engagements Across Canada
Ella Hunter recently presented Public Health Governance research she participated in at St Francis Xavier University’s Student Research Day 2025. Ella’s work focused on analysis of focus group participant responses on community wellness and public health, as well as data extraction of literature on Canadian’s experiences with public health from 2019-2024. She had a very busy evening and won the Service Learning prize for her poster presentation!
In preparation for the Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit (TRRU) Public Health Governance’s focus groups, we have been working on background information about the Canadian public’s perceptions of public health within the CIHR funded co-investigator’s team by exploring the use of secondary analysis of qualitative research, as well as a more conventional literature review. We presented our work at the CPHA 2024 in Halifax, April 23-25, 2024. This meant too many references for the poster! – They and the poster are below:
June 2021– The Social Life of Standards: Ethnographic methods for local engagement has been published by UBC Press. The edited volume is the culmination of a CIHR funded project on standards and standardization.
The book provides a framework to think about how standards are created, resisted, and re-developed by communities. It includes many ethnographic case studies; from stem-cell and protemics labs, through ebola crisis, to indigenous environmental and child welfares cases.
It was a privilege to think through what standards meant with talented folks working in many different areas. The book has been featured on a recent Queensland University of Technology blog
(clockwise from upper right hand corner)
Co-editor Dr. Janice Graham, Free book draw winner: Dr. Pauline McKenzie Aucoin, co-editor Dr. Regna Darnell, contributor Dr. Ian Puppe, co-editor Dr. Christina Holmes, and contributor Dr. Udo Krautwurst
May 2021 – The paper that Christina Holmes, Udo Krautwurst, Kate Graham, and Victoria Fernandez co-wrote has recently been published in Anthropologica’s (the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society) first open access issue, which includes a thematic section on Giving Shape to COVID-19. Our paper is entitled ” No Silver bullet Solution: Cruel Optimism and Canada’s COVID – 19 Public Health Messages”.
March 2021 – Kate Graham and Victoria Fernandez presented this research at St. FX’s Student Research Day.
May 2021 – At CASCA 2021 Christina Holmes presented the joint research that she, Udo Krautwurst, and two StFX students, Kate Graham and Victoria Fernandez wrote on how the science was discussed by public health officials and journalists during the first wave of COVID-19.
Christina Holmes 