Dr. Jackie Schoemaker Holmes

Dr. Jackie Schoemaker Holmes is a qualitative research specialist, sociologist, and gender and sexuality scholar whose work centres on the empowerment of individuals and communities. Her cutting edge research on public forms of nudity and sexuality contextualized an in-depth investigation, the first of its kind, of discourses of sexuality in Canada and how they frame the legality and practice of public nudity. Her other groundbreaking research centered on the first Canadian ethnographic study of online dating among young professionals by examining how constructions of the self online have implications for the reproduction of gendered categories of being, mate selection, and ultimately love in our technologically-mediated world. Schoemaker Holmes has done research in a variety of contexts including Vancouver’s Drug Court and municipal government-level studies on the feasibility of creating immigrant entrepreneur attraction strategies for small cities in Canada as well as research in the service of policy recommendations for the federal government. She now conducts research in the service of non- profit organizations and situates her work in meaningful needs-oriented approaches that allow her to capture the words and voices of girls and young women so as to serve them in evidence-based, field tested, relevant, local, and community-integrated ways. Schoemaker Holmes is deeply committed to community, intersectional research strategies, and her role as facilitator and conveyor of the meaning that individuals and communities make of their experiences, their communities, and the world.