Paivi Abernethy

Paivi Abernethy is a research fellow / visiting scholar with the Centre for Global Studies transdisciplinary practitioner-scholar in health and sustainability integration, located in Victoria, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She is an academic researcher, former public health practitioner, and private sector scientist and has worked in the interface of health and the environment for over 20 years, specializing in children’s environmental health, health promotion, environmental justice, and planetary health.

Paivi was born and raised in Finland but has lived and worked in a number of other countries, including Canada since 2001. Her PhD in Social and Ecological Sustainability is from the University of Waterloo and Master’s degrees in social and natural sciences from Lancaster University in the UK (Health Research) and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark (Biochemistry), respectively. Her research interests centre around knowledge co-production for more fair and effective decision-making and policies towards healthy and sustainable community development, with emphasis on impacts of resource extraction on Indigenous populations and child health. She is particularly interested in assessing linkages between water contamination (chemical pollution) and its impacts on food systems and children’s health. However, her research embraces also social, ecological and Indigenous determinants of health and examines trust, power, and social networks through the lenses of critical political ecology, feminist perspectives, and STS (Science and Technology Studies). Central to her research are community-based and community-driven approaches that both identify issues and develop solutions through community capacity building and empowerment.

For more information, visit her website.