Laura Bisaillon

Laura Bisaillon

Laura Bisaillon is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.  She is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose research program is substantively organised at the intersections of the politics of health and illness, socio-legal studies, and immigration studies.

About:  In Canada, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East, I investigate the organisation and production of knowledge and practices related to immigration, HIV/AIDS, law and policy application, and applied ethics. I use ethnography, and in particular institutional ethnography, as well as qualitative strategies and insights from the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies to understand the challenges experienced by people who occupy subaltern positions within social hierarchies. Ultimately, I strive to produce theoretically robust, historically situated, and empirically grounded analyses for public policy and legal decision-making in ways that can make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to the political sociology of health. I am cross appointed at the graduate level at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Je suis bilingue en français et anglais.