Biography:

Dr. Whitney Wood is a historian of medicine, health, and the gendered body in modern Canada. She earned her PhD from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, ON in 2016, and before joining VIU in July 2019, held postdoctoral fellowships at Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Calgary. Dr. Wood’s research explores the broad history of attitudes towards and experiences of pain during childbirth. During her first five-year term as Canada Research Chair, Dr. Wood will continue her research on twentieth-century birth cultures (with a specific focus on Vancouver Island), build collaborations in the study of gendered medical violence, and launch a new project that explores the history of women’s pain across the life cycle. Building on her previous work at the intersections of the history of health and medicine and women’s and gender history, Dr. Wood’s work as CRC in the Historical Dimensions of Women’s Health centres around the ultimate goal of seeking to improve women’s encounters with the Canadian health care system.