Dr. Tara Holton
Post Doctoral Research Associate with Dr. Laurence Kirmayer
Tara is currently completing her postdoctoral fellowship in affiliation with the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit at McGill University. She obtained her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta. Tara’s primary research interests involve:
- Discursive analyses of the cultural construction of suicide amongst Aboriginal peoples
- Postcolonial examinations of the representation of culture and suicide in research and practice, and most recently,
- The construct of resilience.
Tara has also conducted program evaluations of suicide prevention programs and has served as a consultant for knowledge translation projects as well as reports on suicide prevention.
Dr. Ebba Olofsson
Post Doctoral Research Associate with Dr. Laurence Kirmayer
Dr. Olofsson, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Jewish General Hospital/McGill University. She has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Uppsala University (Sweden). Her dissertation In Search of a Fulfilling Identity in a Modern World: Narratives of Indigenous Identities in Sweden and Canada was published at the same university (2004). The study involved fieldwork in Sweden and in Montreal, a combination of participant observation and gathering narratives of persons with mixed parentage - Indigenous and European. She is living in Montreal since 1998 (the beginning of the Canadian fieldwork). The postdoctoral research explores the narratives of Inuit men and women from northern Quebec who underwent medical treatment for tuberculosis in hospitals in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. The focus is on those individuals who were sent south for treatment in their youth or childhood and who are today in their 60’s and 70’s. The study involves life history interviews with persons living in Montreal and persons living in different communities in Nunavik.