Faculty Member
Michael Atkinson BA, MA, PhD
- Email Address(es)
- michael.atkinson(at)utoronto.ca
- Office Phone
- 416-978-7205
- Office Address
- 40 Sussex Ave Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J7
- Division(s)/Institute(s)
- Social & Behavioural Health Sciences Division
- Position
- Professor
- SGS Status
- Full Member
- Appointment Status
- budgtry Crss
- Admin Position
- Graduate Coordinator
Research Interests
- Existential pain and suffering
- Invisible disabilities (epilepsy, insomnia, chronic pain)
- Men’s health
- Physical cultures of violence and pain communities
- Suicide
- Ethics and bioethics
- Ethnography
- Narrative methods and narrative medicine
- Interpretivism, existentialism, phenomenology
Michael Atkinson is a PhD in Sociology from the University of Calgary. He is a Professor of physical cultural studies in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Michael’s central areas of research, teaching, and supervision pertain to the study of suffering and pain in a variety of physical cultures and health care contexts. He is particularly interested in the existential phenomenology of invisible/hidden disabilities, and is presently engaged in ethnographic/narrative research projects on epilepsy and insomnia. Michael continues to engage in qualitative research on boy’s and men’s heath trajectories and radically contextual relationships with violence, depression, and suicide. In this work he explores the potential and promise of narrative ethics and narrative medicine for sufferers and practitioners. Michael is the Director of the Suffering, Pain, and Ethics Lab (University of Toronto), co-Editor of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, and present Chair of the Health Sciences Research Ethics Board (University of Toronto).