When I began my postdoctoral fellowship, my mandate was clear but daunting: to help develop new research initiatives in the emerging area of planetary health education. Coming from a background in political ecology and environmental anthropology, I had utilized ethnographic methods to explore how structural political and economic forces—colonialism, extractivism, and environmental governance—shaped the conditions of Indigenous health and wellbeing in particular local contexts, including Belize and Canada. The Dahdaleh Institute provided a uniquely generative space to connect these critical perspectives with global health, education, and practice-oriented research.

One of the most formative experiences of my postdoc was collaborating with Mark Terry on the Planetary Health Film Lab. This initiative brought together planetary health, media literacy, and youth-led storytelling, supporting young people to explore how climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality shape their lives and futures. Youth participants produced short documentary films that were later shared through the United Nations Youth Climate Report and screened at UN climate conferences. Seeing youth voices move from community-based learning spaces to global policy arenas was a powerful reminder of what education can do when it is grounded in care, creativity, and collaboration.

Alongside this work, I led several externally funded research projects as Principal Investigator that were deeply shaped by the Institute’s interdisciplinary ethos. Through a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, New Journey to Save Fish: Oshki Maadaadiziwin Jaa Bimaaji’ut Gigooyike, I worked with the Bagida’waad Alliance – an Indigenous environmental organization based on the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula –  to support Indigenous youth-led story-telling grounded in an Anishinaabe worldview and emphasizing relational health, responsibility, and sovereignty, and mobilizing outcomes through youth-produced films, conferences, and public-facing writing.

Building on this momentum, I was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant for the project Planetary Health Partnership: Anishinaabe youth guardians, land-based learning, and the practice of living well with the world. This multi-year project supported a wide range of experiential and community-driven activities—from youth guardianship programs and habitat restoration to ceremonial canoe journeys, water walks, and intergenerational learning—demonstrating what decolonial planetary health education can look like in practice.

During my postdoc, I also continued a parallel stream of research examining the political economy of conservation and health. A SSHRC Insight Development Grant for the project Smart Conservation and the Production of Nature 3.0 in Belize allowed me to study the growing use of “smart” technologies in protected areas in Belize, exploring how digital surveillance and predictive policing intersect with Indigenous wellbeing. This work led to conference presentations, public scholarship, and interviews with organizations such as the Berkeley Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, reinforcing the importance of critically examining how technological solutions are framed within global health and environmental governance.

In the later stages of my postdoctoral fellowship, I served as Co-Principal Investigator (alongside Kate Tilleczek) and Belize Country Lead for the Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing (PYPW), a large interdisciplinary initiative funded through 91ŃÇɫ’s Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters program. PYPW brought together scholars from education, global health, environmental studies, and the social sciences with youth, educators, and community partners across Canada, Belize, Chile, and Costa Rica. The project was designed to better understand how young people experience and make sense of planetary change—climate disruption, environmental degradation, digital transformation, and social inequality—and how these forces shape their wellbeing, identities, and futures.

A defining feature of PYPW was its commitment to youth-led and youth-advised research and education. Across project sites, we worked with Youth Advisory Committees who helped shape research questions, methods, and knowledge mobilization strategies. In Belize, where I coordinated project activities in partnership with the Julian Cho Society and the Maya Leaders Alliance, this involved training Indigenous Maya youth in qualitative research methods and digital storytelling, supporting them to conduct interviews with peers and Elders, and working alongside them to produce documentary films on planetary health and wellbeing. These youth-created films were subsequently shared through the United Nations Youth Climate Report and screened at UNFCCC COP28, creating opportunities for youth voices from the Global South to be heard in global policy spaces.

Beyond individual outputs, PYPW functioned as a space for collective learning and relationship-building. The project fostered sustained dialogue among youth across different cultural and ecological contexts, while also supporting collaboration among researchers and educators committed to decolonial, care-centred approaches to planetary health education. This work culminated in a SSHRC Connection Grant–funded Conference for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing, which brought youth advisors, educators, and researchers together to share insights, reflect on lessons learned, and collectively imagine future directions. For me, PYPW exemplified the kind of planetary health research and education that the Dahdaleh Institute champions: grounded in justice, attentive to power and inequality, and oriented toward meaningful engagement and transformation.

Most recently, I have been working  with colleagues at the Young Lives Research Lab to create Canada’s first official , a national initiative developed through funding from the Government of Canada. While often framed as an individual or psychological issue, our team’s approach situates digital wellbeing within broader political-economic and infrastructural contexts. Guided by UNICEF-Canada’s Index for Child and Youth Wellbeing and co-designed and developed with a Youth Advisory Committee, the Hub supports educators, families, and policymakers in understanding how platform economies, surveillance, and data extraction shape young people’s social and emotional wellbeing. This work extends political ecology into the digital domain, treating digital infrastructures as socio-technical environments that condition health and wellbeing.

During my time at the Institute, I was also deeply involved in academic service and community-building. I was a founding member of a Dahdaleh Institute committee dedicated to advancing the decolonization of global health research, an initiative that emerged from shared recognition that global health must more directly confront colonial histories, power relations, and epistemic inequities. Through this committee, we helped launch a multi-year seminar series on Decolonizing Global Health Research, creating space for sustained dialogue, critical reflection, and institutional learning across disciplines.

In addition, I served as a Steering Committee Member for the Critical Perspectives on Global Health (CPGH) Symposium and Seed Grant Initiative (2023–2025). In this role, I contributed to shaping symposium themes, reviewing seed grant applications, and supporting early-stage, critical, and interdisciplinary global health research led by faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students.

I am deeply grateful to James Orbinski and Kate Tilleczek for bringing me into this postdoctoral role and for creating an environment in which I was able to learn, experiment, and grow as a scholar. Their mentorship, trust, and intellectual generosity gave me the space to take risks, to build new collaborations, and to develop a research program that bridges critical scholarship with engaged practice. I am also thankful to the broader Dahdaleh Institute community for fostering a culture of collaboration, care, and critical inquiry that continues to shape how I approach research and teaching.

Looking back, what stands out most about my time at the Dahdaleh Institute is not just the projects I worked and the outputs produced—though I am proud of those outcomes—but the Institute’s commitment to critical, justice-oriented, and practice-engaged global health research. The space to think across disciplines, to take political and ethical questions seriously, and to work alongside scholars and practitioners who value collaboration and care has been foundational to my development as a researcher and educator.

As I step into my new role at Wilfrid Laurier University, I am thrilled to continue this relationship with the Dahdaleh Institute as an Adjunct Faculty Fellow. I look forward to ongoing collaboration on planetary health education, youth wellbeing, and decolonial research practices, and to supporting the next generation of scholars working at the intersections of health, environment, and social justice.

Re-joining the Institute feels like coming full circle—and I am excited to see where this shared work will go next.

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Valentina De Leon, BA (Hons.)

Valentina served as a Global Food System & Policy Research Assistant at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research from July 2023 to August 2024. In this role, she provided research support for various externally funded global health projects, including literature reviews, key informant interviews, qualitative analysis, and group model building workshop facilitation.

A key focus of Valentina's work was on the project "Colonial Histories and Contemporary Food Systems," where she conducted semi-structured interviews with Indigenous governance leaders, food security advocates, policymakers, and scholars. She analyzed literature and interview transcripts using Dedoose to identify system elements and interactions, which were then mapped visually using Kumu software to develop Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs). Her work culminated in the preparation of a project poster presented at the 2024 Geneva Health Forum.

Currently, Valentina is pursuing a Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. This program is directly related to her interest in global health, as she feels it will equip her with the analytical skills and policy expertise necessary to address complex health challenges on a global scale. Valentina would like to focus her studies on understanding how policy frameworks can be designed and implemented to improve health outcomes and equity, particularly in diverse and underserved populations.

"Professionally, my time at the Dahdaleh Institute was invaluable. It allowed me to build a network of mentors and collaborators who are leaders in global health, furthering my commitment to this field. The Institute offers a unique environment where you can engage with complex global health challenges from multiple perspectives—whether it's through systems thinking, policy analysis, or hands-on research with diverse communities. The more you immerse yourself in the collaborative spirit of the Institute, the more you’ll grow both professionally and personally."

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Clarelle Gonsalves, BSc (Hons.), M.D.

Dr. Gonsalves was the Dahdaleh Institute's inaugural Planetary Health Intern where her research focused on the identification and assessment of key performance indicators related to planetary health. Her specific projects included exploring and defining existing key performance indicators (KPIs); identifying and proposing other KPIs for the "Lancet Countdown on the health and climate change” event in 2018; exploring and defining existing and proposed KPIs on the health impacts of climate change in relation to the Ecological FootPrint Project.

"My time at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research allowed me to understand the intricate relationship between planetary health and local, national, and global health outcomes as well as better understand how to identify, modify, and measure key performance indicators that, when measured and intervened upon, have the potential to lead to sustainable change."

After completing a BSc (Hons.) in Biomedical Science at 91ŃÇÉ« and an M.D. at McMaster University, Clarelle is currently a Paediatrics Resident at the University of Toronto. Based out of The Hospital for Sick Children, her current research is dedicated to standardizing and optimizing health outcomes for children with diverse medical presentations who do not readily have access to tertiary paediatric centres, with a clinical focus on developing medical spaces and curricula that foster sustainable and equitable healthcare delivery.

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Urmi is a recent graduate from the global health program with a specialization in global health policy, management, and systems at 91ŃÇÉ«. In addition to her studies, Urmi was a research assistant for Global Food System and Policy Research (FW2022-23, SU 2023), under the supervision of Professor Tarra Penney. She primarily contributed to a systematic scoping review about the role of artificial intelligence in non-communicable disease prevention policy. As a former recipient of an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, she actively interested in health equity, policy, and the intersection between emerging technologies and health.

In her spare time, Urmi was actively engaged in the 91ŃÇÉ« community and enjoyed collaborating with other as the Vice President of Student Engagement in the Global Health Student Association at 91ŃÇÉ«.

When reflecting on her time at the Dahdaleh Institute, she stated the following "[My] involvement with the Dahdaleh Institute allowed me to gain valuable research experience as well as exposure to a new and rapidly growing area of health. It sparked my interest in the intersection between emerging technologies, like AI, and improvements in societal health. I also had the opportunity to join an amazing team and receive valuable mentorship, as well as learn from the many wonderful people doing important work at the Dahdaleh Institute!"

Urmi is currently pursuing a Doctor of Medicine (MD) at McMaster University. The Dahdaleh Institute is so proud of the work that Urmi has accomplished and we wish her the best in her future studies!

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Tiana was a Dahdaleh Institute global health intern in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years. While working with Jennie Phillips, Dahdaleh Institute research fellow, Tiana co-authored six papers on the ethics of digital contact tracing for COVID-19. And during her work with Director Dr. Orbinski and his design team, she applied her research tasks to her own studies and asked, “if Dr. Orbinski can approach medicine through a design lens, why not approach the field of disaster and emergency management (DEM) through a design lens?” and thus, she began to explore and understand the field of DEM through the eyes of a designer and entrepreneur.

As she puts it, her passion and motivation to do research is “not only about developing an expertise; it’s about discovering new knowledge and becoming a thought leader.”

Building on these rewarding experiential opportunities, Tiana applied for and was awarded the Fulbright Canada Killam Fellowship—a prestigious binational academic exchange program hosted by Canada and the United States to celebrate and promote scholarly excellence, cultural immersion, and Canadian-American relations. As the first DEM undergraduate student in North America to receive the Killam Fellowship, Tiana completed her degree at Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and participated in the 2022 Harvard Women in Foreign Policy Conference. One of her favourite courses was a political science seminar course that she completed at MIT with Dr. Erik Lin-Greenberg titled "Emerging Technology and International Security". 

In spring 2022, after completing a final semester of studies at Boston’s Wellesley College with cross-registration at MIT and Harvard University, Tiana graduated summa cum laude from 91ŃÇɫ’s Disaster & Emergency Management program (BDEM 2022). In recognition of her outstanding work, she was awarded the for graduating students who leave 91ŃÇÉ« a better place thanks to the significant leadership they demonstrated during their time on campus. 

Next, Tiana was employed at the Ontario Ministry of Health as a policy analyst, where she worked on policy projects related to big data and artificial intelligence and hopes to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illnesses and diseases and ultimately improve the health and well-being of Ontarians. Currently, Tiana is employed with Metrolinx as an Emergency Management Specialist in the Investigations and Intelligence Unit. In the future, Tiana hopes to return to Boston to pursue graduate studies.

The Dahdaleh Institute is proud to have counted Tiana as one of our global health interns and wishes her all the best in her future endeavours.

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