Jeffrey Denis

Education
Research Interests
Research Grants
Selected Publications

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University, 2011

[Back to the top]

Research Interests

As a social psychologist with interests in race and ethnic relations, social inequality, and health, I am currently engaged in four major research projects:

1. An ethnographic study of Indigenous-Settler relations in Northwestern Ontario: This project examines the construction and negotiation of social identities and intergroup “boundaries” and “bridges” as well as the nature of racism and anti-racism in a contemporary small-town setting.
2. Building on the above, I am conducting life-history interviews with self-defined “allies” of Aboriginal peoples. My goal is to enhance understanding of how some non-Indigenous people come to support Indigenous rights.
3. Along similar lines, I am planning a long-term evaluation of the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on non-Indigenous Canadians’ awareness of and attitudes toward “Aboriginal issues.”
4. I am also a collaborator on a large-scale, CIHR-funded health intervention project, which involves working closely with First Nations communities to develop poverty reduction strategies and monitoring the long-term impact of these strategies on health and well-being. More generally, I have an abiding interest in the social determinants of health and citizen participation in (health care) decision-making, sparked by earlier research on the transformation and closure of the Wellesley Hospital in downtown Toronto.

[Back to the top]

Research Grants

2010: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health, Aboriginal Health Intervention Research Grant, 5 years – “A Poverty Reduction Approach to Improving the Health and Well-Being of First Nations Communities” (project leader: Dr. Frederic Wien, Dalhousie University, in collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations)

2009: National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, 1 year – “Native and Non-Native Group Interactions”

[Back to the top]

Selected Publications

BOOKS:

2006: Survival Strategies: The Life, Death, and Renaissance of a Canadian Teaching Hospital. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. (Co-edited with David Goyette and Dennis William Magill)

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS:

Forthcoming (2011): “Bridging Understandings: Aboriginal and White Perspectives on the Residential School Apology and Prospects for Reconciliation.” In Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives, 2nd edition, co-edited by Lorne Tepperman and Angela Katyla. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

JOURNAL ARTICLES:

Forthcoming (2012): “Transforming Meanings and Group Positions: Tactics and Framing in Anishinaabe-White Relations.” Special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.