Dr. Heather Boynton

Spirituality and trauma grief in loss in children and families.

Children's mental health.

Creative and Expressive Therapies.

Spirituality and Mental Health and Exercise.

Yoga, emobied movement practices. 

Lifespan mental health. 

Spirituality and resiliency and posttraumatic growth.

Dr. Heather M. Boynton is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Social Work, Central and Northern Alberta Region. Heather’s scholarly interests focus on spirituality in trauma, grief and loss, child and family mental health, resiliency, wellbeing and posttraumatic growth. She has  interests in service provision and evaluation of mental health programs that include attachment, emotion focused, narrative, and behavioural therapies and therapeutic holistic approaches, such as yoga, expressive arts, mindfulness, self-compassion, well-being, and spirituality. Some other areas of scholarly work include spirituality and spiritual development across the lifespan, trauma informed approaches, strength-based social work, child welfare, leadership, cultural competence, interprofessional education, and quality of life and wellbeing. Her expertise is in qualitative research particularly in constructivist epistemologies with grounded theory and thematic analysis. She was the Interprofessional Education Coordinator at Lakehead University and continues to promote and be a strong advocate for interprofessional education as a member of the CICE committee. She is an Adjunct Professor in Kinesiology at Lakehead University. She previously taught at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and Dalhousie University, and was the Vice President of the Canadian Society for Spirituality and Social Work.