SWAP maintains a list of researchers in Canada who study issues related to feminist psychology and the psychology of women, girls, and gender for students seeking graduate supervisors and those wishing to network or collaborate. To add your own name to the list, change the information listed about yourself, or suggest other additions, please fill out the request form at https://bit.ly/swap_info_share (select “Addition or edit to SWAP’s list of psychology researchers in Canada who study issues related to gender, women, or feminism”). (list last updated September 2024)
| Faculty Member | University | Research interests pertinent to feminist psychology/psychology of women | Website address |
| Kathryn Bell | Acadia University | Interpersonal violence, including intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and childhood abuse, using a contextually-based framework to identify risk factors that are proximally and dynamically associated with episodes of interpersonal violence perpetration and victimization | https://psychology.acadiau.ca/kathryn-bell.html |
| Randy Newman | Acadia University | Examining the impact of girls only science-based activities (e.g., camps) on girls’ career aspirations in science, as well as on their self-efficacy and their sense of belonging in science-based disciplines | https://psychology.acadiau.ca/dr-randy-newman.html |
| E. Lisa Price | Acadia University | Sexual health, violence in relationships, and attachment, intimate relationships and mental and relational well-being | https://psychology.acadiau.ca/dr-lisa-price.html |
| Kharah Ross | Athabasca University | Close relationships and health; health disparities at the intersection of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, and understanding normative physiological activity during pregnancy, the postpartum period and early childhood | https://www.athabascau.ca/humanities-and-social-sciences/our-people/kharah-ross.html |
| Ann Cameron | University of British Columbia | Examination of gender as a factor in youth perspectives on healthy and unhealthy intimate relationships to gain insight into the perceptions and beliefs of youth with respect to their experiences of gender norms, dating relationships and same-sex friendships | https://psych.ubc.ca/profile/ann-cameron/ |
| Judith Daniluk | University of British Columbia | Women’s sexuality and reproductive health; voluntary and involuntary childlessness; clinical supervision; developmental transitions in adult life | https://ecps.educ.ubc.ca/person/judith-daniluk/ |
| Liisa A. M. Galea | University of British Columbia | Sex and sex hormone influence on brain health (cognitive and emotional); estrogens impact on neuroplasticity and resilience to stress; neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders; postpartum depression, short and long-term impact of reproductive experience (motherhood) on the brain; impact of sex hormones across the lifespan | https://psych.ubc.ca/profile/liisa-galea/ |
| Toni Schmader | University of British Columbia | Draws upon and extends existing work on implicit gender bias, bias mitigating interventions, social stigma, social justice, social cognition, intergroup emotion, self-esteem, and motivation and performance | https://psych.ubc.ca/profile/toni-schmader/ |
| William Hall | Brock University | Diversity, inclusion, gender; how interpersonal interactions and broader organizational norms can make people feel devalued in a situation because of a given social identity (e.g., age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political affiliation, mental health status) | http://www.will-hall.ca/ |
| Deinera Exner-Cortens | University of Calgary | Evaluating healthy relationships resources in school and community settings; developing and evaluating implementation support tools for school-based mental health service delivery;and prevention of adolescent dating violence | https://psyc.ucalgary.ca/manageprofile/profiles/deinera-exner-cortens |
| Lianne Tomfohr | University of Calgary | Understanding how maternal adversity is associated with infant and child health problems and testing interventions in pregnancy that treat parental depression, anxiety, insomnia and couples distress to see if those changes lead to better parental and child health profiles | https://psyc.ucalgary.ca/manageprofile/profiles/lianne-tomfohr |
| Tina Daniels | Carleton University | Understanding the role social/relational aggression plays within children’s close relationships, in particular girls’ best friendships and peer networks | https://carleton.ca/psychology/people/tina-daniels/ |
| Carmen Arth | Concordia University of Edmonton | Focus on challenging the oppressive constraints of dominant social, cultural and gender discourse; how the shifting discourse of gender and sexual identity theory impacts lived experience | https://concordia.ab.ca/faculty-arts/departments/psychology/faculty/carmen-arth/ |
| Wendy Pullin | Concordia University of Edmonton | A focus on women and gender issues in four main areas of interest: (a) anger and gender; (b) qualitative research and critical analysis; (c) violence and social context; & (d) narratives of French feminists discussing their contributions to the evolution of gender theories and critical analysis. | https://concordia.ab.ca/faculty-arts/departments/psychology/faculty/wendy-pullin/ |
| Natalie Rosen | Dalhousie University | Female sexual disorders and romantic relationships | http://psychology.dal.ca/People/Full-time%20Faculty%20Pages/Rosen%2C_Natalie.php |
| Paula Barata | University of Guelph | The impact of sexual, physical, and financial violence on women, how we can ameliorate violence against women, the evaluation and implementation of violence against women programs, and community engaged research | https://www.uoguelph.ca/psychology/users/paula-barata |
| Alexandra Zidenberg | King’s University College at Western University | Forensic psychology, particularly sexual violence, including: the effect of extralegal bias (e.g., victim bodyweight) on perceptions of sexual violence scenarios, sexual coercion, children under 12 with concerning sexual behaviour, risk assessment and recidivism, zoophilia, and bestiality. | https://www.kings.uwo.ca/academics/faculty-info/member-profile/?doaction=getProfile&id=azidenbe |
| Kirsten A. Oinonen | Lakehead University | Gender, sex, sexuality, hormones, disabilities, power/privilege, and experiences unique to a specific sex or gender; women’s health and issues (hormonal contraceptive side effects, preconception health, women’s sexuality), health conditions (polycystic ovary syndrome, eating disorders, premenstrual dysphoric disorder), and developmental/biological periods (e.g., menarche, the premenstrual phase, menopause) that are of relevance to women | https://www.lakeheadu.ca/users/O/koinonen |
| Josephine Tan | Lakehead University | Health issues from a cultural, gender, and systemic perspective | https://www.lakeheadu.ca/users/T/jtan/node/17289 |
| Jennifer Mather | University of Lethbridge | The difficulties faced by women in science | https://directory.uleth.ca/users/mather |
| Jessica Cameron | University of Manitoba | Exploring the influence of gender and sexual identities on romantic relationship formation; studying current and ideal practices for ethical measurement of diverse gender identities; the scientific practices involved in ethical and appropriate methods to include people with diverse gender and sexual identities in psychological research. | https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~cameron2/index.htm |
| Jen Theule | University of Manitoba | Issues of women and diverse individuals in the fields of professional psychology. | https://webapps-dist.umanitoba.ca/psychology/bio/index.php?page=1&bioid=60 |
| Nake Fuks | McGill University | Sexual orientation, gender identity, intersecting identities and mental health of minority individual, and iIntegration of immigrants and refugees | https://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/nate-fuks |
| Ada L. Sinacore | McGill University | Issues related to social justice, oppression, and trauma with special attention given to diversity such as immigration, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, language, and social class; gender-based violence, homophobic bullying, and workplace challenges (e.g., harassment, bullying, and violence). | https://www.mcgill.ca/edu-ecp/ada-l-sinacore-phd |
| Julie Gosselin | Memorial University of Newfoundland | Psychosocial adjustment of individuals (parents, stepparents, and children) to multiple family transitions, as well as the experience of individuals living in what could be described as marginalized family structures, with a special focus on women and motherhood | https://www.mun.ca/psychology/bio/julie-gosselin/ |
| Elena Hannah | Memorial University of Newfoundland | Prenatal development, childbirth, lactation and menopause, and the effects of lifestyle on health, disease and aging | http://dogsbody.psych.mun.ca/parts-X/Faculty%20Bio/ehannah.html |
| E. Sandra Byers | University of New Brunswick | Human sexulity, sex education, sex therapy | http://www2.unb.ca/~byers/ |
| Lucia O’Sullivan | University of New Brunswick | Sexuality and intimate relationships, including the impact of new digital technologies on close relationships, with a primary focus on adolescents and young adults; barriers and facilitators to access to sexual healthcare and services | https://www.unb.ca/faculty-staff/directory/arts-fr-psychology/osullivan-lucia.html |
| Carmen Poulin | University of New Brunswick | The social organisation of the everyday lives of women and other marginalised groups in specific institutions, and the cognitive schemata they use to make sense of this reality; women in non-traditional work place (e.g., female firefighters), sexualities (e.g., lesbians and gays in the military forces), ageing in place (e.g., 90+ year old individuals living independently in their own home), and the role and place of (feminist) women in the history of psychology. See p-sec.org for more information. | https://www.unb.ca/faculty-staff/directory/arts-fr-psychology/poulin-carmen.html |
| Heather Sears | University of New Brunswick | Adolescents’ help-seeking behavior, particularly how adolescents’ gender and individual and relational characteristics combine to predict this behaviour, and how parents, siblings, and peers socialize adolescents to use help seeking to manage problem; how parents and youth work through normative events (e.g., taking about sexual health) | https://www.unb.ca/faculty-staff/directory/arts-fr-psychology/sears-heather.html |
| Annie Duchesne | University of Northern British Columbia | How stress differently influences our body and behaviours across the life span, with a specific focus on the role of sex and gender | https://www2.unbc.ca/people/duchesne-dr-annie |
| Michael E. Arfken | University of Prince Edward Island | The intersection of critical social theory and phenomenology; challenging social psychological conceptualizations of social reality; environmentalism, gender, economics, globalization, cultural diversity, qualitative research methods, social justice, and cognitive science | https://www.upei.ca/profile?u=marfken |
| Colleen MacQuarrie | University of Prince Edward Island | Feminist liberation psychology; critical participatory research with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, pregnant adolescents, and women leaving abusive relationships; access to reproductive justice; Aboriginal communities | https://www.upei.ca/profile?u=cmacquarrie |
| Meredith Chivers | Queen’s University | Sexual attractions, sexual response, and sexual functioning, and the influence of gender and sex on these aspects of our sexualities; neurocognitive factors associated with sexual response in women with and without sexual difficulties | https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/meredith-chivers |
| Sari van Anders | Queen’s University | Focuses on sex research (e.g., desire, orgasm, pleasure, porn), gender/sex and sexual diversity (including with models we’ve developed (like sexual configurations theory), and with relevance to trans, nonbinary, queer, and/or other minoritized gender/sex and sexual experiences/identities/existences as well as “studying up” with gender/sex and sexual majorities), and social neuroendocrinology, all within a feminist/queer science perspective ( associations between desire and testosterone, and how social behavioural contexts related to intimacy, sexuality, and power/oppression change testosterone) | https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/sari-van-anders |
| Jennifer Gordon | University of Regina | Women’s mental health; premenstrual syndrome; postpartum depression; infertility; perimenopausal depression; and effects of female reproductive hormones on mood | https://www.uregina.ca/arts/psychology/faculty-staff/faculty/gordon-jennifer.html |
| Sarah Sangster | University of Regina | Experiences in the reproductive health care system; informed reproductive decision making in the contexts of fertility; control and infertility; prenatal screening and diagnostic testing; pregnancy and birth; pregnancy termination; and transition to parenting | https://www.uregina.ca/arts/psychology/faculty-staff/faculty/sangster-sarah.html |
| Angela Weaver | St. Francis Xavier University | Body image and women’s sexual functioning, “friends-with-benefits” relationships, women’s sexual agency, gender and sexuality in film, and positive psychology and sexuality | http://www2.unb.ca/~byers/ppl/aweaver.html |
| Maryanne Fisher | St. Mary’s University | Female intrasexual competition, women’s mating strategies, and indicators of female physical attractiveness; Interest in the ways that feminism(s), women studies, and gender studies lead to novel questions about evolutionary psychology | https://www.smu.ca/researchers/science/maryannelfisher/ |
| Michelle LaFrance | St. Thomas University | Women’s experiences of depression, self-care, leisure, and sexuality, including critical explorations of the DSM and the medicalization of women’s distress; experiences of family caregivers of older adults | https://www.stu.ca/psychology/michelle-lafrance/ |
| Monika Stelzl | St. Thomas University | Examination of the construction of sexuality knowledge, women’s accounts of sexual pleasure, and migration processes | https://www.stu.ca/psychology/monika-stelzl/ |
| Meng-Chuan Lai | University of Toronto | Focuses on the experiences of female and gender-diverse autistic people and the relations between neurodevelopmental conditions, sex differentiation, gender socialization, and mental health | https://www.psych.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/meng-chuan-lai |
| Gillian Einstein | University of Toronto | Life course and aging; sexual diversity studies; women’s brain health and aging; gender and health | https://www.psych.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/gillian-einstein |
| Ellen Gutowski | University of Toronto – OISE | Women’s experiences with poverty and intimate partner violence; understanding how systems-level responses to women who are affected by these two stressors may either promote well-being or unintentionally cause harm | https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/aphd/Home/Faculty_and_Staff/Faculty/697273/Ellen_Gutowski.html |
| Niva Piran | University of Toronto- OISE | Embodiment; prevention of negative body image and eating disorders; outcome evaluation of feminist therapy; day hospital alternative to inpatient treatment of eating disorders | https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/aphd/Home/Faculty_and_Staff/Faculty/1515/Niva_Piran.html |
| Lana Stermac | University of Toronto- OISE | Posttraumatic health and health promotion, focused largely on the effects of traumatic and adverse events on mental health and education; unwanted sexual behaviours on educational experiences and academic performance on culturally diverse women | https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/aphd/Home/Faculty_and_Staff/Faculty/1517/Lana_Stermac.html |
| Sarah Dermody | Toronto Metropolitan University | Identify and address differences in substance use patterns and harms based on one’s gender and sexual identities | https://www.ryerson.ca/psychology/about-us/our-people/faculty/sarah-dermody/ |
| Michelle M. Dionne | Toronto Metropolitan University | Body image in young women and the psychology of eating, with an interest in personality variables and other individual differences which can protect against, or predict, problems | https://www.ryerson.ca/psychology/about-us/our-people/faculty/michelle-dionne/ |
| Maria Gurevich | Toronto Metropolitan University | The ways that popular and scientific discourses about sexuality intersect with people’s everyday experiences, with negotiations of sexual (im)possibilities and (dis)pleasures at the core; interrogation of normative assumptions about sexual health, agency, desire, and relationship conduct, based on privilege, power, and access | https://www.ryerson.ca/psychology/about-us/our-people/faculty/maria-gurevich/ |
| Karen L. Blair | Trent University | LGBTQ Psychology, Lesbian Relationships and Identity Development, Sexual Minority Women, Women’s Sexual Behaviour and Satisfaction, Gender-Based Violence, Femmephobia. Available to supervise MSc, Ph.D. students in Psychology at Trent University, MSc Clinical Psychology students at Acadia University, and Interdisciplinary Social Research Ph.D. students at Trent University. | https://www.trentu.ca/psychology/karen-blair-profile |
| Terry Humphreys | Trent University | Sexual consent/negotiating sexual interactions (i.e., sexual (mis)communication and sexual coercion); cognitive and behavioural aspects of first sexual experiences; sexuality and technology (e.g., Internet use, sexting); and sexual resourcefulness | https://www.trentu.ca/psychology/faculty-research/terry-humphreys-profile |
| Larissa Rossen | Trinity Western University | Motherhood, perinatal mental health, maternal identity, working mothers | https://www.twu.ca/profile/larissa-rossen |
| Uzma Rehman | University of Waterloo | Factors that promote or hinder healthy and open sexual communication between partners; how an individual’s working models of intimacy and attachment needs influence the course and types of sexual difficulties they experience in their current relationship | https://uwaterloo.ca/psychology/people-profiles/uzma-rehman |
| Rachel Calogero | University of Western Ontario | Social appearance-based ideologies, sexual and self-objectification, benevolent and hostile sexism, gender roles and social stereotypes, weight stigma, motivated social cognition, values, prejudice and discrimination, collective action and resistance, and disordered eating and exercise through a sociocultural and resistance lens | https://www.psychology.uwo.ca/people/faculty/profiles/calogero.html |
| Mindi Foster | Wilfrid Laurier University | How women cope with gender discrimination; how different forms confronting gender discrimination (e.g., email to media; Twitter; educating the perpetrator) may help or hinder women’s psychological well-being (mood, life satisfaction, growth, etc.) | https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-science/faculty-profiles/mindi-foster/index.html |
| Eileen Wood | Wilfrid Laurier University | Gender issues that impact on learning, health and relationship | https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-science/faculty-profiles/eileen-wood/index.html |
| Patti Fritz | University of Windsor | The etiology, developmental course, correlates, and measurement of various forms of family violence, including intimate partner violence; adolescent development, intimate relationships, animal abuse, and couples therapy; how and when dating violence first begins in emerging adults’ relationships and partner aggression that occurs through electronic means | https://www.uwindsor.ca/psychology/352/patti |
| Kathryn Lafreniere | University of Windsor | Individual and societal influences on health and well-being; community and health psychology; personality predictors of academic risk-taking; gender influences in the workplace | https://www.uwindsor.ca/psychology/364/kathryn-l |
| Charlene Y. Senn | University of Windsor | Feminist social psychology with a focus on male violence against women, particularly sexual violence; the impact of male-stream pornography on women’s lives; development and evaluation of interventions on university campuses to change the campus climate related to sexual assault | https://www.uwindsor.ca/psychology/371/charlene |
| Kendall Soucie | University of Windsor | Focuses on the social, cultural, and institutional contexts within which identity and psychological health and wellness develop; intersections of health and narrative identity, particularly around the diagnosis and management of chronic health conditions within women’s health (specifically polycystic ovary syndrome); research interests pertinent to feminist psychology/psychology of women, women’s health, health equity, critical feminist scholarship, feminist methodology | https://www.uwindsor.ca/psychology/376/kendal |
| Jennifer Connolly | York University | Adolescents’ social development and psycho-social health, focusing on dating and romantic relationships; Topics of focus: resilience, conflict, break-ups, dating violence, teen mothers, and relationships of vulnerable youth | https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/index.php?mid=1585 |
| Jennifer Mills | York Univeristy | Malleable risk factors for disordered eating, including body dissatisfaction and dieting; factors that influence how women perceive their bodies and the psychological consequences of social media use; women’s reactions to eating disorder prevention messages; the nature and risk factors of “orthorexia nervosa” or a pathological obsession with clean or healthy eating | https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/index.php?mid=162289 |
| Alexandra Rutherford | York Univeristy | History of women, gender, and feminist activism in psychology; objectivity, advocacy, and activist social science in the 20th century; science and public policy | https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/index.php?mid=78979 |
| Regina Schuller | York Univeristy | Behavioural assumptions in the law (e.g., behaviours of juries, police, etc); decision making processes in cases involving violence against women; impact of racial bias in the courtroom; and legal strategies for curbing its influence | https://health.yorku.ca/health-profiles/index.php?mid=4723 |
| Jennifer Steele | York Univeristy | Takes a social cognitive approach to understanding stereotyping, prejudice, and interpersonal expectancies; understanding racial biases and gender stereotyping in childhood and consequences of biases among minority and majority children | http://www.yorku.ca/steeleje/research/faculty.php |