Kathleen’s research is focused on understanding the gendered dimensions of parenting practice and the engagement of male caregivers in parenting programmes for low-income families; particularly for parents in street situations. Her goal is to undertake community-based participatory research to optimise an adapted version of the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) programme for families in street situations in Kenya to reduce violence against children and violence against women.
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Prior to joining the Department’s Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation programme, Kathleen worked in several local and international research and policy roles. At the University of Toronto, she led the participatory adaptation and mixed-methods evaluation of the PLH programme with and for street-connected mothers in Kenya, work that she will continue to expand upon throughout her DPhil. She has since worked at Dalhousie University, coordinating the development of a regional network for facilitating community-driven Indigenous health research in Atlantic Canada (the Wabanaki-Labrador Indigenous Health Research Network), and managing the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) study, an international longitudinal study on the biopsychosocial-ecological resilience of youth living in oil and gas-producing communities in Canada and South Africa. Kathleen also has experience in municipal and global policy spaces, including an internship at Toronto Public Health, and at the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations in Geneva where she was responsible for the health, labour, and governance portfolios.Â
Kathleen obtained a Master of Public Health from the University of Toronto, and a B.Sc. in Biology from St. Francis Xavier University.
