Dr. Lisa Smith

Lisa has a PhD in Sociology and over 20 years of experience as a researcher. Throughout her career, she has been committed to the role that social science inquiry can play in advancing social justice and creating a better world. Across all her work, she centers the importance and value of diverse voices and sites of knowledge and works with partners across a range of sectors, from community to academia to government, from local to global. 

Her expertise lies in gender, health, and equity, and she has had the opportunity to lead and collaborate on a range of research projects, such as sexual violence and the post-secondary context, policies and programs related to the menstrual cycle, and the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An innovator and collaborator at heart, Lisa founded the Menstrual Cycle Research Group, the only group of its kind in Canada, as a hub for research mobilization, training, and community-building. In her role as a sociology instructor at Douglas College, she supports students in honing the skills they need to engage in critical and mindful social engagement, as their careers grow and they take their first steps as researchers. To ensure her research can have maximum impact and be shared with a wide audience, Lisa works on an ongoing basis to support knowledge dissemination and public engagement through publicly available and open-access outputs, such as reports, podcasts, and zines, to ensure that data can be applied where it is needed most to contribute to healthy futures for women, girls, and gender-diverse people.