Recent Work

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Lalonde D., Nonomura R., Tabibi J., Baker L., Morris M. (2021). Social Inclusion Through Trauma- and Violence-Informed Research: A Focus on Survivors of Violence. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of Social Inclusion. Springer, Cham.

Trauma- and violence-informed research represents an approach to knowledge production that acknowledges how research can propagate harm and that attempts to protect against further harm. Trauma- and violence-informed research recognizes that participants may be affected by violence, victimization, marginalization, exclusion, and other traumatic experiences. All aspects of the research are designed in a way that does not re-traumatize the research participants but actively promotes their healing, social inclusion, and participation in research design. This chapter includes examples of why trauma and violence are significant considerations for how research is conducted in Canada. Some of these examples are of research which has caused trauma and contributed to social exclusion, such as research performed on rather than with Indigenous peoples, many of whom are survivors of physical, sexual, emotional and state violence, and trauma. Other examples illustrate the potential for more inclusive research practices. A focus on trauma- and violence-informed research goes beyond avoiding the traumatization of participants through insensitive methodologies. It is rooted in respect for, and work with, survivors of trauma and is most often led or co-led with survivors themselves. Trauma- and violence-informed research is appropriate for any population having experienced physical, sexual, psychological, social, or other trauma, such as refugees, frontline responders or others with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), persons from LGBTQ+ communities, Indigenous peoples, racialized populations, and other populations having experienced trauma and/or social exclusion.

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Lalonde, D. (2019). “Does Cultural Appropriation Cause Harm?” Politics, Groups, and Identitie, 9(2), 329-46. [Download here]

Cultural appropriation is often called a buzzword and dismissed as a concept for serious engagement. Political theory, in particular, has been largely silent about cultural appropriation. Such silence is strange considering that cultural appropriation is clearly linked to key concepts in political theory such as culture, recognition, and redistribution. In this paper, I utilize political theory to advance a harm-based account of cultural appropriation. I argue that there are three potential harms with cultural appropriation: (1) nonrecognition, (2) misrecognition, and (3) exploitation. Discerning whether these harms are present or absent offers a means of placing specific instances of cultural appropriation on a spectrum of harmfulness. I conclude by considering how cultural appropriation, and associated appropriative harms, may be avoided.

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Lalonde, D. (2018). “Regret, Shame, and Denials of Women’s Voluntary Sterilization.” Bioethics, 32(5), 281-8.

Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure. Physicians defend such denials by citing the possibility of future regret, a well‐studied phenomenon in women’s sterilization literature. Regret is, however, a problematic emotion upon which to deny reproductive freedom as regret is neither satisfactorily defined and measured, nor is it centered in analogous cases regarding men’s decision to undergo sterilization or the decision of women to undergo fertility treatment. Why then is regret such a concern in the voluntary sterilization of women? I argue that regret is centered in women’s voluntary sterilization due to pronatalism or expectations that womanhood means motherhood. Women seeking voluntary sterilization are regarded as a deviant identity that rejects what is taken to be their essential role of motherhood and they are thus seen as vulnerable to regret.

“Regret involves feeling disappointment or remorse over an occurrence or a missed opportunity. It is not an emotion experienced in isolation; it is informed and shaped by our social relations with others. In the case of voluntary sterilization, regret is socially constructed within a discourse where womanhood means motherhood.”

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Alcantara, C. , Lalonde, D. , Wilson, G. N. (2017). “Indigenous Research and Academic Freedom: A View from Political Scientists.” The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 8(2).

Over the last several decades, scholars working on Indigenous topics have faced increasing pressure to engage in research that promotes social justice and results in formal partnerships with Indigenous communities. In this article, we argue that non-community-based research, in which the researcher exercises academic autonomy over the project, still has a role to play in Indigenous-focused research, depending on the research question, topic, and situation at hand. We explore this argument from the perspective of political scientists who study Indigenous–settler political relations in Canada.

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