Ardath Whynacht
Biography
Dr. Ardath Whynacht (she/her) is a queer feminist who writes and researches about mental health, violence and social transformation. She is a research fellow of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre at UNB and is currently serving as a technical advisor on a transformative justice project for the family violence sector in Ontario. She worked for many years in an adolescent psychiatry research and knowledge translation team at the IWK Health Center. She has run arts-based programs in youth-serving organizations, inpatient units and in minimum and maximum security units of the Federal prison system since 2004. Dr. Whynacht works closely with the non-profit sector and has contributed to the work of organizations such as the AIDS Coalition of NS, the Canadian Red Cross, Avalon Sexual Assault Centre and Laing House, a support center for youth living with mood disorders and psychosis. As part of the Imagining Futures research team, she is conducting arts-based mental health research with LGBTQ+ youth in the Maritimes. She is a regular media commentator and has been quoted in the Globe and Mail, CBC News National, Global, Guts Magazine, CTV News, The Breach, Global News and the Examiner. She lives, teaches, and cares for her interspecies family on un-ceded Mi'kmaw territory and is always interested in supporting student research! If you are looking for faculty mentorship, a pep talk, or a cup of tea, you can find her in the Sociology department in AD 222, or via video chat.
Publications
Books
Whynacht, Ardath (2022). Insurgent Love: Transformative Justice and Domestic Homicide. Fernwood Press
Kutcher, Stan; Bruce, Vanessa; Whynacht, Ardath; Etches, Selene (2013) Transitions: A Resource for Students Transitioning from Schools to Universities.
Book Chapters
Whynacht, Ardath (2023). "Justice and the Cycle of Violence in Settler Colonialism". Ed. Alex
Khasnabish. Making Sense of Society: Power and Possibility, An Introductory Textbook on Contemporary Social Research. Fernwood Press.
Whynacht, Ardath and Jones, El. (2018). "Tender Places: sexual assault and abolitionist activism". Ed. KelleyAnne Mallinen. Dis/Consent: Perspectives on sexual violence and consensuality. Fernwood Press.
Ardath Whynacht. (2017). "Prison in the Spaces Between Us: Abolition, Austerity and the Possibility of Compassionate Containment". Ed. Max Haiven, Alex Khasnabish. What Moves Us : The Lives and Times of the Radical Imagination. 57 - 68. Upping the Anti / Fernwood Press.
Kutcher MD, S, Y. Wei, Y, Whynacht, A. Blackwood, A. (2015). "A collaborative and sustainable approach to address mental health promotion and early identification in schools in the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia and Beyond". Ed. S. Kutcher, Y. Wei, M. Weist. International School Mental Health for Adolescents: Global Opportunities and Challenges. : 30 - 45. Cambridge University Press.
Articles
Whynacht, Ardath, Arsenault, Emily, Cooney, Rachael. (2019). "Abolitionist Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Notes on Trauma-Informed Practice, Collaboration, and Confronting the Impossible”. Social Justice Journal; Special Issue on Penal Abolition. 45-4.
Whynacht, Ardath (2018) 'Marks on bodies': borderline personality disorder, agential realism and intimacy as method". Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Special Issue on Illness Narraties, Networked Subjects and Intimate Publics. 4:1.
Gahagan, J, Whynacht, A. Gray, K (2015). "Sex and Gender Matter in Health Research: addressing health inequities in health research reporting". International Journal for Equity in Health. 14(1)
Whynacht, Ardath (2009). "Raperas of the Revolucion: young women, capitalism and Cuban hip hop culture". Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 11:3.
Education
PhD Concordia University (2017)
MA Dalhousie University (2010)
BA / BSc Combined Honours, University of King’s College (2004)
Teaching
SOCI 1201 Sociological Imagination
SOCI 2221 Youth Culture
SOCI 3311 Qualitative Research Methods
SOCI 3511 Health & Illness
SOCI 3991 Deviance, Crime and Social Control
SOCI 3991 Emotion
SOCI 4211 Critical Criminology
SOCI 4201 Human Services
SOCI 4991 Abolition and Transformative Justice
Research
Current funded research
2020 – 2022 ‘We Have Survived Before: An Inter-generational, Youth-led Mental Health Intervention for LGBTQ+ Youth (NBHRF and Mental Health Research Canada)
2018 – 2022 Imagining liveable futures for queer, trans, and two-spirit youth: A community and arts-based study (SSHRC)
2017 – 2022 Insurgent Love: Mapping Transformative Justice Networks (SSHRC)
Grants, awards & honours
New Brunswick Health Research Foundation & Mental Health Research Canada Grant (2020)
Research Fellow- Muriel McQueen Centre for Research on Family Violence (2019 – present)
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2018)
SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017)
Mount Allison Social Science Teaching Award (2017)
Nova Scotia Department of Culture & Heritage Creative Research Award (2017)
Concordia University Fellowship (2010 – 2014)
CIHR Graduate Fellowship (2010)
Canada Council for the Arts (2006 – 2014)