Heather Young-Leslie, MA (McMaster), PhD (York)

Area of Study / Keywords

Medical Anthropology Research Development Knowledge Mobilization Research Impact Ethnography Qualitative Methods Feminist Research Culture of Biomedicine Tonga Papua New Guinea International Development

---

About

Experienced in academic and applied research, with a history of competitive grants success, peer-reviewed publications, mentoring, change management, and of envisioning and enabling strategic research success within the portfolio of the Vice-President (Research & Innovation), University of Alberta, as well as liaising for the university at Research Impact Canada, I served as the inaugural Senior Research Partner, Social Sciences and Humanities, using ethnographic, human-centred design, and professor-oriented principles in the design of the new Research Partner Network at the University of Alberta. Currently, I am seconded to the Faculty of Graduate and Post-Graduate Studies, where I am helping to create a new, killam-funded doctoral program focussed on interdisciplinary research for resolving 'wicked problems'. I also serve as University of Alberta's SSHRC Leader (2025-2028), am an Adjunct Professor in Anthropology, a Board Member for the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, and have served as a Merit Review Committee member for SSHRC and NIH. 
Pronouns: She/Her. 
As a fifth generation settler of Irish and Scots ancestry, raised in Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territories covered by the Upper Canada Treaties, and a first-in-family university graduate and feminist, I am grateful to acknowledge I reside and work in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan), in the lands of the Pâpâsces, the Neyihaw, Nakota Sioux, Denesuline, Anishinaabe and Niitsitapi peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. I am honoured to recognize the authority of, and my ongoing responsibility to, Treaty 6.

---

Research

I am a medical anthropologist with ethnographic expertise in Tonga and Papua New Guinea. With interests in gender, health and power dynamics, my SSHRC, Wenner-Gren, Rockefeller Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts and CIHR-funded research career has focussed on cultural responses to public health messaging in major international campaigns, from WHO's maternal-child health initiatives in Tonga, to the global fight against HIV in Papua New Guinea, and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. I have peer reviewed publications on: facemasks in Covid-19, medicine and modernity, ecological knowledge, Indigenous women's textiles, mothering, and ethnography of Oceania (Tonga, Papua New Guinea).

---

Teaching

Past teaching includes anthropology of health, culture of biomedicine, gender and globalization, and Oceanic ethnography.

Effective July 1, 2025, my role at the University of Alberta has changed. I am now a Special Project Lead in the Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies, and am no longer the Senior Research Partner for the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. My shift from the office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation  to the Faculty of Graduate and Post-Graduate Studies includes a reduction to 50% time, and working remotely. In the months of July and August 2025, I will be working one day a week (usually Wednesday), and in September and October 2025, I will be working Monday to Thursday. If you are interested in contributing to the forthcoming consultations for design of the new, grand challenge/wicked problem, interdisciplinary doctoral program, please email me.   

Ying Shan Doris Zhang, Kimberly A. Noels, Heather Young-Leslie, Nigel Mantou Lou

Frontiers in Psychology. 2022 March; 13 (Online) 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.853830

---

Nigel Mantou Lou, Kimberly A Noels, Shachi Kurl, Ying Shan Doris Zhang, Heather Young-Leslie

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. 2022 January; 10.1037/cdp0000519

---

Nigel Mantou Lou, Kimberly A. Noels, Shachi Kurl, Ying Shan Doris Zhang, Heather Young-Leslie

Canadian Psychology. 2021 July; 63 (3):279-297 10.1037/cap0000305

---

Ying Shan Doris Zhang, Heather Young-Leslie, Yekta Sharafaddin-Zadeh, Kimberly Noels, Nigel Mantou Lou

Journal of Community Health. 2021 February; (Online)

---

Heather E. Young-Leslie & Sean E. Moore

Springer, Dordrecht.. 2012 January; Happiness Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: the History of Non-Western Science (Vol 6) 10.1007/978-94-007-2700-7_13

---

View additional publications

• Adjunct Professor, Anthropology
• Bluesky
• LinkedIn
• ORCID
• Research Partners Network (Staff Directory)