In this REDI Leader spotlight, we speak with Dr. Susan Cox, Professor and Director of PhD and MSc Programs at the School of Population and Public Health, Interim Director of the Centre for Applied Ethics, and Chair of Biomedical Ethics of the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia.
Tell us about your background.
I was born in London England and came to Canada by sea as a 3 week old infant, sleeping in a bureau drawer in my parent’s cabin for the duration of the voyage. I am of Welsh, English and Scottish ancestry. My maternal grandmother Gwen instilled in me a deep respect for language and its importance to culture, identity and belonging. And my grandfather Doug, a Yorkshireman, passed on to me a sense of humility and a stubborn penchant for going against the grain. My parents met in the first medical class at UBC and always encouraged me to pursue an education. When horses called me more loudly than university, I went to riding school in the US and later managed a show stable. Horses remain as a lifelong passion alongside my academic career and I am grateful for their honesty and empathic awareness.
What motivates you to engage in REDI work?
I grew up in the 1960’s in a comfortable Vancouver neighbourhood near the UBC campus. The school curriculum at Southlands Elementary celebrated the great explorers but was silent in teaching about our First Peoples. I knew nothing about the Musqueam people, their traditions and stewardship of the land or the trauma of the residential school system and the sixties scoop. I remember many years later when I was an undergraduate studying anthropology and sociology at Simon Fraser University, I went on a fieldtrip to the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, on the lands of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. I was dumbfounded to learn the history of this place and the scope of the violence enacted there. Many of my unquestioned beliefs about Canadian society were shattered.
Can you share a project or research you’ve been involved in that promotes REDI?
My early experience of unlearning colonial history had a lasting impact for me. I realize how important it is that we create and hold space for honest but compassionate dialogue with one another about who we are and what we value. One project that is perhaps an offshoot of this employs theatre to prompt conversations about the challenges arising in graduate supervisory relationships. As a Program Director for the MSc and PhD programs, I see the profound impacts, both positive and negative, of graduate supervisory relationships. This is true for students and faculty as these relationships are pivotal to mental health and wellbeing as well as successful degree completion for students and research productivity for faculty. In my own research, I’ve been active in advocating for the importance of recognizing and celebrating diverse ways of knowing, especially as counters to the dominance of Western research paradigms. Poetry, storytelling, and visual methods such as bodymapping all tap into forms of experiential and embodied knowledge that are often neglected with more traditional approaches. In one collaborative arts-based project, I worked with artists, researchers, people with dementia and their care partners to create an online art exhibition that challenged commonplace stereotypes by focusing on resilience and what it means to live well with dementia.
What role do you see yourself playing in improving REDI in population and public health?
I recently volunteered to co-lead a REDI working group tentatively named “Towards creating inclusive spaces”. I am excited to work together with students, staff and faculty to explore how best to make our physical and social/cultural spaces feel truly welcoming and inclusive for everyone at SPPH. I am envisioning that this effort could begin with an arts-based workshop where we gather and create individual and collaborative works that enable us to surface and discuss our ideas and experiences. The resulting work could then be displayed as an invitation for others to respond. If you would like to be part of this work, please let me know! We are hoping to get underway early on in the new year (2025).
