Jen Sebring is a PhD candidate and Vanier graduate scholar in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Jen is an artist-researcher whose work engages social studies of medicine through a critical disability studies lens. Jen has received research funding from Research Manitoba, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Manitoba Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovation Network. In addition to various community and academic roles, she recently served as a Trainee Lead for the Manitoba chapter of CIHR’s Sex-and-Gender Science Trainee Network. Currently, Jen works as a research assistant on SSHRC and CIHR-funded projects on home care with Dr. Christine Kelly; and recently worked on the project Catalyzing H.E.A.L Medicine, with the Health Arts Research Centre, with Dr. Darian Goldin Stahl and Dr. Sarah de Leeuw.
Jen’s Master’s thesis looked at how patienthood is experienced by women and gender-diverse people living with chronic illnesses. Jen’s work is published in both academic and public venues, including Still Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader (Inanna 2021), Akimblog (2020), and Sociology of Health & Illness (2021) and Canadian Journal of Public Health (2022). Currently, Jen is conducting research on functional neurological disorder.
Before pursuing graduate studies, Jen completed an Honours Bachelor of Arts at the University of Winnipeg in Women’s and Gender Studies with a concentration in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications. While at the University of Winnipeg, she worked as a research assistant on the community-based, research-creation project, the greenhouse artlab and as an Academic Writing Tutor. They also gained experience working in the arts, as an intern at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, and community engagement, with the YMCA of Toronto and Spence Neighbourhood Association. These experiences have influenced Jen’s research approach: she uses community-engaged, arts-based methods to explore complex issues at the intersection of health, culture, and society. In tandem, arts-based and community-engaged methods ensure that the research process itself is as impactful as its outcomes, and that each project is grounded in and responsive to the everyday context of the communities it aims to serve.
Jen previously served on the advisory board of the Canadian Association for Health Humanities and the Board of Directors of Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba.
Jennifer C.H. Sebring, PhD(c) 