Blog: Notes from the Field

The Great Balancing Act!

My PhD journey began in September 2016. My start was probably a bit different from the average student’s. I pulled up to MacDonald Institute reminiscing about my graduate school days that I had finished a few years before. I thought about the classes I took and the friends I made during my MSc program in Family Relations and Human Development. This time I was not arriving to Student Orientation with one of my best friends (who happened to be in the same program as me during my master’s), but I was arriving with my parents and my four-month-old son. That’s right—I am fairly sure I was the only one on campus that day beginning this new school year with my mom, dad, and son in tow.

Our Knowledge, Our Voices Postcard Series

Violence against women1 is a pervasive and persistent problem, but too often it is an invisible problem. In family and community conversations, silence hangs over this topic, even though it touches the lives of most women and people who care about women.2 The reasons for this are complex, but stigma and backlash are among the reasons women do not speak out.3 Both the likelihood of experiencing violence and the risks of speaking out are intensified for women experiencing multiple forms of structural marginalization, especially disabled women, LGBTQ+ people, women, young women, and Indigenous women.4 The fact that violence against women most often occurs in private settings – “behind closed doors” – also contributes to its invisibility. With the loss of social supports and stay-at-home orders, the increase in violence directed towards women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic has been called a “shadow pandemic” by researchers and advocates.5

Our Approach to Research

In 2019, the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership (CRP) was launched to bring together a diverse community of partners to act on the recommendations set out by the 2018 Indigenous Circle of Experts We Rise Together Report. The partnership represents a seven-year program of work hosted by the IISAAK OLAM Foundation, the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and the University of Guelph.

Autism Acceptance Day

April 2, 2021 was Autism Acceptance Day. [Editor's note April 2024: We have changed the language from Autism Awareness to Autism Acceptance to reflect the understanding of autism as a lived experience, not an illness or condition.] The focus of this day was to provide an opportunity for people to learn about what Autism is, acknowledge the lived experiences of people with Autism and increase support to these individuals, their families and caregivers. Approximately 1 in 66 children are diagnosed with Autism. However, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is still very misunderstood by many people. ASD is a term used that refers to a wide variation in types and severities of symptoms people with Autism experience.

International Transgender Day of Visibility

A statement from the Anti-Oppression Rainbow Gender & Sexuality Diversity Cluster:

Change Starts Now

The Guelph Black Heritage Society (GBHS) is a community cultural and spiritual gathering space, providing resources and services to empower the community to connect to our Black history, present & future. A team of Univeristy of Guelph students had the opportunity to work with the GBHS. Below, one of the students from this team, Kamrani Doray, provided us with a blog post on the project and its importance to the community.

Intersectional Conversations with Girls and Women with Disabilities

Each year the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences holds a conference meeting that brings together over 70 different academic associations to the same location. It offers a great opportunity to meet other scholars, policy makers, and practitioners to learn about research happening in a variety of fields, including the Canadian Disability Studies Association, the Canadian Sociological Association, and the Sexuality Studies Association to name a few. A past undergraduate research assistant at the Centre had the pleasure of attending this conference and shared her experience with us. The student took the opportunity to ask them what living and working well means to them.

Make Website Content More Accessible With These Tips on Accessibility

At its best, the web makes it easier for people to share, collaborate, and provide new opportunities for all. But for the web to truly achieve its collaborative potential, online documents and software must be accessible to all users, including those using assistive devices.

Accessibility Features of Online Meeting Platforms

As December 3rd was International Day of People with Disabilities, we would like to dedicate this month's blog theme to the importance of accessibility.

Understanding Community Data in Community

The Displacement, Emergence and Change cluster is one of five intersecting clusters of the Live Work Well Research Centre. The cluster focuses on building inclusive cities, communities, towns and governance models that result from resource extraction, lack of living wages, and other broad socioeconomic and political shifts and challenges. With a focus on promoting inclusivity, the cluster examines how communities can be places where diverse families, livelihoods and all living environments thrive.