White male smiling with a mustard shirt and a backpack, against the backdrop of a pastel-yellow building and a blue sky.

Jay Cavanagh

BA (Hons.), MA
Pronouns: he/him | ele/dele

Positions

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences

Graduate Assistant (Non-Teaching)

Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology

Assistant Editor

Faculty of Arts, Department of History

Graduate Assistant Research

Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology

Graduate Assistant Research

Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology

Contact information

Email

jay.cavanagh@ucalgary.ca

Web presence

LinkedIn

Website

For media enquiries, contact

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Background

Credentials

Category 1 Training in Diploma Programme History, International Baccalaureate, 2021

TCPS 2: CORE (Course on Research Ethics), Panel on Research Ethics, Government of Canada, 2023

Educational Background

Bachelor of Arts with Honours History, University of Leicester,

Master of Arts History, University of Toronto,

Up-to-date academic curriculum vitae (C.V.).

Biography

Jay Cavanagh (he/him) is a queer and first-generation doctoral candidate and Killam Laureate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. He works under the supervision of Professor Ariel Ducey and the guidance of Dr. Martina Kelly & Dr. Pratim Sengupta (Committee). 

In addition to Killam, Jay has received a number of competitive awards, including a Doctoral Entrance Scholarship ($20,000) and an Eyes High International Doctoral Scholarship ($15,000). He is also a recipient of the Michael & Michelle Williams Award in Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine Studies (March 2024), which supported a period of extensive archival fieldwork on the revolutionary Brazilian psychiatrist, Dra. Nise da Silveira, at the Instituto Municipal Nise da Silveira (IMNS) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

Jay's thesis research lies at the intersections of the sociologies of mental health and knowledge. Through an ethnography of experience and care in the work of Nise da Silveira, his research works to put southern epistemologies and intersectionality in conversation with critical phenomenology.  

Outside of his doctoral research, Jay is a regular co-host of The BPD Bunch, a video podcast by and for people living with borderline personality disorder (BPD), and the Volunteer Manager and sitting member of the Board of Directors for the Borderline Personality Disorder Society of British Columbia. 

A self-identifying member of mad and psychiatric survivor communities, Jay's academic and professional work jointly take up the task of reorienting understandings of BPD through destigmatized and lived-experience lenses.

Projects

Afeto Catalisador e Encontros Fronteiriços com o Cuidado: Uma Etnografia da Casa das Palmeiras

Doctoral thesis project. 

White male in front of a screen that reads 'borderline personality disorder' in English and Brazilian Portuguese, delivering a presentation from behind a podium.
Group photograph of the researcher and students at a Brazilian university.
Group photograph of the researcher and students at a Brazilian university.
Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro.
White male researcher showing a gloved hand and wearing a white ply mask as he handles archival documents.
Three people discussing museum items at an exhibition in São Paulo.
Two people discussing museum items at an exhibition in São Paulo.
Mureta da Orca in Rio de Janeiro.
Centro Psiquiatrico Pedro II in Engenho de Dentro, Rio.

Awards

  • Departmental Scholarship, University of Calgary. 2022
  • Suzanne Kanuka Award, University of Calgary. 2022
  • Doctoral Entrance Scholarship, University of Calgary. 2023
  • Eyes High International Doctoral Scholarship, University of Calgary. 2024
  • Michael & Michelle Williams Award in Science, Technology, Environment and Medicine Studies, History of Medicine Days Conference, University of Calgary. 2024
  • Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, Killam Trusts. 2025