Dr. Patricia (Patti) Johnston

Biography

Patricia (Patti) Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary. She holds a PhD in Social Work and completed a Bating-Postdoctoral-Fellowship at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Canadian Studies Centre. She is a Qallunaat (non-Inuit) settler from southern Canada and she works from the Faculty’s Central and Northern Alberta Region office (on Indigenous lands, Treaty 6) in Edmonton, Alberta.  

Dr. Johnston’s research focuses on community-based socio-health participatory research in relation to social, cultural, and economic impacts of policy and practice on Inuit children and families in northern/Arctic rural and remote locations. Her work emphasizes Inuit self-determination and governance, anti-Inuit racism, sexual and reproductive health, gendered labor and exclusion, Inuit ways of knowing and being, Inuit-approaches to child and family wellness (child welfare), and the perpetuation of colonial relations, systems, and structures over time. She is dedicated to supporting Inuit women's wellness and racial health equity, capacity building and community development, and keeping Inuit families together. 

 Dr. Johnston's research involves collaboration with northern Arctic community members, leaders, and organizations, and interdisciplinary academic partners to address issues relevant to and determined by Arctic Indigenous peoples and communities in Canada and the United States. To this work, Dr. Johnston brings experience from working for four provincial and territorial governments and over two decades of work with/ in Arctic Canada.