Maria Mayan, PhD

About

Maria Mayan is a Professor, and Vice Dean, and an Associate Director of the Community-University Partnership in the School of Public Health. She is an engaged scholar who situates her work at the intersection of government, not-for-profit, structurally disadvantaged, and clinician communities. She grounds her work in the policy environment and focuses on how we can work together on complex health and social issues. Her work focuses on the causes of marginalization and how to mobilize against systems of inequity, using primarily qualitative and community-engaged research in rigorous and creative ways.

As a qualitative methodologist, she has studied, written about, and conducted qualitative research since the early 1990s. She spent over ten years at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology learning and teaching qualitative inquiry locally and internationally. She has been invited to teach qualitative inquiry by government, not-for-profits, the private sector, and the academic community worldwide. Her qualitative expertise has culminated into a book, Essentials of Qualitative Inquiry; the second edition by Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Essentials-of-Qualitative-Inquiry/Mayan/p/book/9781629583273

One of her most valued activities is joining with colleagues and graduate students to use both conventional and unconventional qualitative and community-based methods to explore intriguing and pressing health research issues.

Her current research program is embedded in community economic development in Drayton Valley, Alberta.

Research

• Qualitative research
• Integrated knowledge translation
• Policy and systems change
• Poverty
• Community-based participatory research

Teaching

• Qualitative research
• Community-based participatory research

Currently teaching in new Master of Arts in Community Engagement program

SPH 536 - Engagement for Public Health Action

Our perceptions and interpretations of what is good for society are at the core of public health's mission but, as you can imagine, every individual has their own opinion about what is good. How do we motivate and engage people with such diverse attitudes and opinions in the dialogue that leads to public health action? Coupled with a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of meta-ethics, normative ethics, epistemology and ontology, this course helps students understand why public health is not as straightforward as one might expect. How different worldviews and ways of knowing shape concepts of ethics and values and, ultimately, understandings of what is good, are considered from normative, Indigenous, and other non-Western perspectives. This foundational work supports experiential learning opportunities where students are paired with organizations and professionals to gain insights into practices and experiences of engagement for public health action. SPH 536 is a required course for the degree of Master of Public Health in General Public Health. Prerequisite: SPH 530. Corequisites: SPH 562, SPH 535, or consent of instructor.

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Started: 2014

The EndPoverty Edmonton vision is to eliminate poverty in Edmonton within a generation.