Author: criticalpsychnetwork

Inspired by Abaya Yalan (Latin American) Feminist and Queer social movements, I am passionate about transforming clinical psychology practice and training to embrace diverse gender, sexual, and cultural embodiments.

As a queer Mexican-Canadian cisgender white woman and an uninvited first-generation settler on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Huron-Wendat, and Seneca, I lead and support projects that focus on hermeneutical responsibility, relational ethics, and participatory methods. I draw from Critical Pedagogy, Transgender Studies, and Narrative approaches in my work. 

I was first introduced to critical theories by my brilliant mentors Dr. Lee Airton and Dr. Michelle Searle during my Master of Education degree at Queen’s University (Katarokwi). I am continuing my journey into critical psychology under the compassionate and irreplaceable supervision of Dr. Maria Gurevich at the SHiFT Lab.

Continue reading “Sofia I. Melendez Ron (they/she)”

Alexis Fabricius is a PhD student in the Applied Social Psychology program at the University of Guelph. She was first introduced to critical psychology during her undergraduate at York University through Drs. Alexandra Rutherford and Thomas Teo. In her time at the University of Guelph, she has continued to develop her critical sensibilities through working with her advisor Dr. Kieran O’Doherty, as well as with other critical scholars including Drs. Jeffrey Yen and Carla Rice.

Alexis is examining the entanglements between psychology and digital technologies like AI. Presently, she is investigating menstrual self-tracking app users’ relationship with their personal data during the Data Revolution by drawing on insights from posthumanism and feminist new materialisms to better understand the vital, relational, affective, agentic, and material roles digital data increasingly play in our lives. Her doctoral research will explore the implicit ontologies of ‘data’ in participants’ talk about their app use, as well as what performativities these ontologies engender. She is also interested in developing a new arts-based methodology called digital meta-narratives to consider how people respond to materializing their relationship with their digital data through story. 

Continue reading “Alexis Fabricius”

Tanja Samardzic is a Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Social Psychology at the University of Guelph being supervised by Dr. Paula Barata. Tanja’s research concerns navigation of the societal messages about how (young) women “should” be in various contexts. A primary research focus of hers is silencing of some aspect(s) of oneself (e.g., voice) within important relationships, which Tanja is exploring and unpacking among young women, some of whom are currently in intimate relationships with abusive men, as part of her dissertation. An additional line of inquiry under the umbrella of navigating societal messages about how (young) women “should be” is exploring women’s experiences with polycystic ovary syndrome, an endocrine condition that pushes the boundaries of “normality,” namely through the presentation of symptoms (e.g., hair growth on the chin and chest, possibly infertility) that challenge normative conceptions of Western femininity.

Continue reading “Tanja Samardzic”

Amanda Jenkins is a PhD Candidate in the Applied Social Psychology program at the University of Guelph, Canada under the supervision of Dr. Kieran O’Doherty. Her research focuses on women’s use and practices of vaginal cleansing products (douches, deodorants, wipes, powders, washes) and the broader marketing of these products to women from a critical feminist perspective. Marketing emphasizes the ‘clean and fresh’ vagina promoting product use as necessary to ‘control’ and ‘eliminate’ vaginal odour and discharge. The marketing of these products and the internalization of these messages by women reflects socio-cultural constructions of women’s genitalia as dirty and problematic. Continue reading “Amanda Jenkins”

Dante Raymond Bazard Jr obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island. During his third year he became interested in critical psychology through his interest in institutional power structures and discrimination. Through this research he met his academic advisor Colleen MacQuarrie and started working on presentations and round table discussion with other students. These sessions were focused on discussing various social issues such as patriarchy and feminism, racial discrimination, and the effects of mass incarceration. Continue reading “Dante Bazard”

Nicole Jeffrey is a PhD candidate in Applied Social Psychology at the University of Guelph and is working under the supervision of Dr. Paula Barata. She primarily uses qualitative and critical psychological approaches to study men’s violence against women, including sexual and intimate partner violence and rape culture on university campuses. At the beginning of her graduate degree, Nicole felt limited by mainstream psychological and quantitative approaches to understanding the world. Critical and qualitative approaches have allowed her to orient her research towards social justice and have challenged her personally and professionally to understand the world and human behaviour more openly and critically. Continue reading “Nicole Jeffrey”

Filippo is a Ph.D. student at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at University of Toronto. His research focuses on the history of psychological and psychiatric disciplines in 19th century Europe and North America. He works within the broad framework of the «history of normality in the West», looking at the production of scientific theories and instruments that proposed to demarcate what was considered normal or pathological in a specific period and context. In particular, he is interested in how the emerging disciplines of statistics, moral psychology, and phrenology offered normative criteria for understanding and explaining mental alienation. Continue reading “Filippo Maria Sposini”