Dr. Rachel Herron is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Brandon University, a Tier II CRC in Rural and Remote Mental Health, and founding Director of the Centre for Critical Studies of Rural Mental Health. Her research examines safety in settings of care, social inclusion and meaningful engagement for people living with dementia, and the diversity of lived experiences of rural mental health. She is the Principal Investigator of the Safe Places for Aging and Care project and she is passionate about improving conditions of care for everyone involved in long-term care, including older adults, family carers, and care workers.

Dr. Sheila Novek is a postdoctoral fellow with the Safe Places for Aging and Care at Brandon University. As part of her role within the study, Sheila is conducting interviews with older adults, family carers and care providers who choose to participate in an interview. Sheila is passionate about research on long-term, dementia care and family caregiving, and has experience conducting interviews with people living with dementia, family carers and health care providers.

Madeleine Kruth is the project coordinator for the Safe Places for Aging and Care project. She is a community affiliate at the Centre for Critical Studies in Rural Mental Health, as well as the Re•Vision Centre for Arts and Social Justice. Madeleine also works as an RA with the Rural Community Health Lab, and for various projects with the Faculty of Health Studies. Her research interests include social determinants of health from feminist and decolonizing approaches; and rural healthcare provision and policy.

Dr. Katie Aubrecht is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Canada Research Chair Health Equity and Social Justice at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. Her research program analyzes marginality and mental health, rurality and resilience across the life span as health equity and social justice issues. This work draws on social theory, intersectional disability studies, aging studies and interpretive, decolonizing and arts-informed qualitative research methods to analyze disability and care education, policy and practice. As Director of the Spatializing Care Research Lab at St.F.X. Aubrecht leads a participatory arts-informed health research infrastructure that supports and enhances meaningful and ethical community engagement and cross-sectoral collaboration to bridge medical, social and cultural approaches to care.

Dr. Brownridge is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. His research and pedagogy focus on the social epidemiology of family violence. The overarching aim of his work is to contribute to an improved understanding of family violence with a view to more effective prevention of this prevalent and devastating social problem. Dr. Brownridge has received numerous awards for excellence in research, teaching, and service, including the Rh Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research in the Social Sciences.

Dr. Funk is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba, whose scholarship has explored how paid and unpaid carers for older adults and dying persons make sense of difficult experiences and negotiate normative ideals and emotions. Her work has elucidated how such processes engage and reproduce broader discourses surrounding age, care and responsibility. Her current SSHRC-funded project is examining the implications of these processes for attempts to mobilize carers in a broad cross-sectoral movement to change structures of care.

Christine Kelly, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Community Health Sciences and a research affiliate with the Centre on Aging at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Kelly is qualitative health researcher with expertise in home and community care services, especially directly-funded home care. More broadly, Dr. Kelly uses qualitative methods to explore continuing care policy, aging, and Canadian disability movements. She is co-editor of the collection The Aging —Disability Nexus, co-editor of Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture and Disability Activism in Canada, and author of Disability Politics and Care, all published by UBC Press.

Dale Spencer is Associate Professor and the Faculty of Public Affairs Research Excellence Chair at Carleton University. Formerly a Banting Fellow and an Ontario Early Research Award recipient, his main research interests are violence, victimization, policing, youth, and conceptions of homelessness, domicile, and the law. Since arriving at Carleton in 2014, he has won the FPA research excellence award and the Outstanding Faculty Graduate Mentor award.

Lori E. Weeks, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University and is cross-appointed in Gender and Women’s Studies. She has expertise in aging and family studies and uses multiple methods to examine care and support services for older adults and their caregivers and factors affecting the health of seniors. Her research often focuses on the needs of vulnerable older adults both in the community and in long-term care homes. She has conducted research on the abuse of older adults with particular focuses on supports for older women experiencing intimate partner violence.

Kirsten Brooks is a research assistant for the Safe Places for Aging and Care Project. She holds her MA in Anthropology from the University of Manitoba. She is a freelance ethnographic researcher, cultural creator, and writer. Her main research interests explore art and political economic perspectives on power, creativity, identity and authority.