Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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Please join the Centre for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research for the first talk in our “Queerying Public Health” speaker series. The series highlights critical research in the area of 2SLGBTQ+ health. This month, we are joined by Dr. Merrick Pilling, a faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor. His work employs an intersectional, anti-racist lens that emphasizes the importance of lived experience, relevance to the communities being researched, and making changes to the systems that create marginalization.

Dr. Pilling will discuss his new book, Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice, which advances a broad critique of the biomedical model of mental illness as it pertains to 2SLGBTQ people, arguing that Mad Studies is especially amenable to making sense of queer and trans madness. Based on empirical data from two qualitative research studies, this book includes analyses of inpatient chart documentation from a psychiatric hospital, and interviews with those who have experienced distress. This talk will focus on various themes from the book including the difference between Mad Studies and mental health research, the use of an anti-racist mad-queer-trans lens, and the importance non-carceral responses to distress.

***Zoom information will be circulated before the event.