Dr. Ashlee Cunsolo

Director, Labrador Institute of Memorial University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, College of the North Atlantic

Community-based Research, Science Outreach, Indigenous Health, Well-Being, Social Determinants of Health, Environmental Change, Environmental Ethics

Media

Lament for the land | Ashlee Cunsolo Willox | TEDxCapeBreton

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Does climate change impact mental health and wellbeing? This TEDxCapeBreton Talk by Ashlee Cunsolo Willox explores that theme among the Inuit in Nunatsiavut, Labrador and examines how changes in the land, climate, and environment are affecting livelihoods and cultural activities.

Ashlee is passionate about the environment and about exploring how our connections to place shape who we are. As part of her deep desire to understand the relationships among place, culture, health, and environment, Ashlee has been working collaboratively with Inuit friends in Nunatsiavut, Labrador to examine how changes in the land, climate, and environment are affecting livelihoods and mental health.

One-of-a-kind beef farm in Labrador shows opportunities abound

Inuit elders receive honorary degrees from Memorial University

Biography

Ashlee Cunsolo is a researcher and environmental advocate working with research and policy to make a difference in how we live with and in this world. As a community-engaged social science and health researcher working at the intersection of place, culture, health, and environment, she has a particular interest in the social, environmental, and cultural determinants of Indigenous health, intercultural learning and dialogue, capacity development, environmental ethics, and the social justice implications of social, environmental, and health inequality. For the past 10 years, she has been working with Indigenous communities and leaders across Canada on a variety of community-led and community-identified research initiatives; ranging from climate change impacts on physical and mental health, cultural reclamation and intergenerational knowledge transmission, suicide reduction and prevention, land-based education and healing programs, environmental grief and mourning, and Indigenization of higher education. Cunsolo has been recognized nationally and internationally for her community-based research and science outreach, including being inducted as one of the inaugural members of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists and being chosen as one of Nature Canada’s 75 Women for Nature. She has given over 200 talks and presentations, was a recent TEDx Cape Breton speaker, and her research was highlighted in a feature interview on CBC’s Quirks & Quarks. She is a former Tier II Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Healthy Communities and Associate Professor at Cape Breton University. She completed a postdoc with the Climate Change Adaptation Research Group at McGill University, and her PhD at the University of Guelph.

Expertise

  • Indigenous Health
  • Community Health
  • Human-Environment Relations
  • Environmental Ethics
  • Health Justice
  • Health Equity
  • Indigenization