Feedback
Parin Dossa
 |
Professor of Anthropology PhD (Anthropology) University of British Columbia; MA (Islamic History) Edinburgh University; BA (English, History) Makerere University, Uganda Email: pdossa@sfu.ca |
Research Interests
Migration, gender and health; critical feminist anthropology; medical anthropology; aging and health policy; politics of disablement; Muslim Women.
Biography
Dr. Parin Dossa, Professor of Anthropology and Associate Member in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, received her education on three continents: Africa Europe and North America. Her long-standing interest on displacement and critical feminist ethnography has led her to focus on the interface between social inequality, health and gender. Based on her research on social suffering and narratives of trauma, Dr. Dossa explores the differential effects of institutional policies on the lived realities of Muslim women in the Diaspora. She grounds her analysis in methodologies that capture the reconstitution of lives on the margins of society. This process questions the conceptualization of the local and the everyday as discrete from the centralized polity, thus presenting the alternative view of margins as a site for the making of a just world.
Dr. Dossa’s field work on Muslim women in metropolis Vancouver and in Kenya, Pakistan and Afghanistan (in progress) has resulted in several interrelated projects: racialized bodies and disabling worlds; policy implications of storytelling in the work of service providers; testimonial narratives and social marginality; place, health and everyday life; social suffering; and anti-racist education and critical pedagogy.
Her work has been published in edited collections and several scholarly journals including Social Science and Medicine, International Journal of Mental Health, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, International Journal of Human Development and Aging, International Journal of Rehabilitation Research (two lead articles), Pakistani Journal of Women’s Studies, Teaching Education (co-authored), Disability and Society, Health and Place (co-authored), Affilia: Journal of Woman and Social Work, and Journal of Muslim Mental Health.
Publications
 |
Racialized Bodies, Disabling Worlds: Storied Lives of Immigrant Muslim Women (2009) University of Toronto Press, Canada. |
 |
Politics and Poetics of Migration: Narratives of Iranian women in the Diaspora (2004) |
Co-Produced Videos
Out of the Shadows: Narratives of Women with Developmental Disabilities, Shaw Cable, Calgary, Alberta (1995)
New Voices: Ethnic Elders in Calgary, Rogers Cable 10, Calgary (1987)
Recently Published Book Chapters
Dossa, P. and I. Dyck "Place, Health, and Home: Gender and Migration in the Constitution of Healthy Space." In Health Inequities in Canada: Intersectional Frameworks and Practices, ed. O. Hankivsky, pp. 239-256, UBC Press, 2011 (revised).
Dossa, P. "Social Suffering: Exploring the Interface between Health Policy and Testimonial Narratives of Canadian Afghan Women." In Engendering Migrant Health, ed. D.L. Spitzer, pp. 147-166, University of Toronto Press, 2011 (reprint).
Recent Published Journal Articles
"Exploring the Disjuncture Between the Politics of Trauma and Everyday Realities of Women in Afghanistan” Journal of Muslim Mental Health, (5)1: 8-21, 2011
“Creating Politicized Spaces: Afghan Immigrant Women’s Stories of Migration and Displacement.” Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. pp. 10-22, Sage Publications, 2008
“Creating Alternative and Demedicalized Spaces: Testimonial Narratives on Disability, Culture and Racialization.” Journal of International Women’s Studies (9) 3:79-98, on-line peer-reviewed Journal, 2008
“Place, health and home: Gender and migration in the constitution of healthy space.” Health and Place (13): 691-701 (co-authored with Isabel Dyck), Elsevier Press, 2007
“Disability, Marginality and the Nation-State, Negotiating Social Markers of Difference: Fahimeh's Story.” Disability and Society, (21) 4:345-358, Routledge Press, 2006
Dossa, P. “Witnessing” Social Suffering: Testimonial Narratives of Women from Afghanistan.” BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, 147: 27-49, 2005
Research Awards and Funding
Recipient of the SFU Bookstore Award: Author of the month (March 2005)
Honoured as a RIIM Scholar of the month (November 2004)
Honoured as a Researcher: Presidents Research Luncheon, Centre for Dialogue, SFU (2001)
Recipient of the Canadian Cable Television Association Award: New Voices: Ethnic Elders in Calgary, Rogers Cable 10 (co-produced video with David Campbell, 1985)
SSHRC/Standard Research Grant
"Writing Trauma: Testimonial Narratives of Afghan Women- Homeland to Diaspora"
Principal Investigator: Parin Dossa
2008 - 2011