Michelle Stewart

Michelle Stewart is an award-winning, and internationally funded social sciences and health researcher, who is a known advocate and activist for social justice. She has a specialization in health and community research, and a commitment to integrating improvisation into social science research methodologies. Dr Stewart has been working with the IICSI Regina site since 2015, in her role as Director of the Community Research Unit, at the University of Regina, which funded some of our previous community projects, and in 2016 she helped to develop the pilot project “We’re all Living in our Imaginations’: Exploring the FASD Experience through Improvised Expression” with IICSI and a range of existing and new community partners, which then attracted further Canada Council Funding and continues to expand in 2017. That project uses theatre, visual arts, and new technologies to provide strength-based approaches to better understand FASD. Her work is grounded in examining the social determinants of health, and the effects of social injustice in health on justice and law. In her national role as strategic research lead at CANFASD Network, she is working with community and institutional partners across the nation to find and implement tools, resources, policy change, and support for those living with complex disabilities, and those vulnerable to inequitable justice systems.