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

Special Project Lead (Killam Interdisciplinary Grand Challenge) , GPS Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies

Pronouns: she/her

Contact

Special Project Lead (Killam Interdisciplinary Grand Challenge) , GPS Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies
Email
Heather.YoungLeslie@ualberta.ca
Address
Triffo Hall
11312 89 Ave NW
Edmonton AB
T6G 2H5

Overview

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.

Announcements

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.   

Featured Publications

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


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