STAFF MEMBERS
Alison Phinney, PHD
Academic Lead, UBC
Dr. Alison Phinney is the Principal Investigator of the Building Capacity. She is a Professor and the Associate Director of Graduate programs at the University of British Columbia, School of Nursing, as well as the Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Personhood in Dementia. She is an expert in dementia, with her work highlighting the potential for people to live well with the disease and as active members of their communities, bringing hope and understanding to families and society. She works in partnership with community leaders and people with lived experience to build knowledge and capacity for supporting personhood and social citizenship of older people, especially those living with dementia and their families. She has demonstrated the importance of social involvement and creative and physical activity for supporting well-being and personhood in dementia.
Email: alison.phinney@ubc.ca
Andréa Monteiro, PhD
Community Research Director, UBC
Andréa Monteiro is the Community Research Director for the Building Capacity project for the Vancouver site. She works alongside people who live with dementia to engage and support community groups and organizations to imagine possibilities of inclusion and meaningful participation of people living with dementia and their care partners. Andréa has a PhD in nursing and is a documentary filmmaker, and her scholarship and filmmaking address social justice issues. She has twenty-three years of community leadership and engagement through the non-profit sector and fourteen years of work between nursing research, education, and clinical palliative care practice. Alongside her role with the Building Capacity Project, she holds a Research Associate position at the University of British Columbia, in the traditional, ancestral and unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory.
Email: andrea.monteiro@ubc.ca
Eric Macnaughton, PhD
Project Manager, UBC
Eric Macnaughton is the Research Manager, responsible for overall management of the project, and coordinating the implementation of new dementia initiatives across the two sites, as well as the research and evaluative aspects of the project. He has a Ph.D. from the UBC Interdisciplinary Studies program, has completed graduate training in community psychology, and has twenty-five years of doing community-based research, evaluation, and knowledge translation in the field of community mental health. Most recently he was involved in the At Home/Chez Soi project, an initiative to implement, evaluate and scale out a model for providing housing and supports for previously homeless people who deal with mental health and addictions issues. His interest in dementia stems from his family background and with the similarities in the mental health’s recovery movement and the aims of this project in building social citizenship for people living with dementia.
Email: eric.macnaughton@ubc.ca
Ania Landy, MS
Community Research Coach, UBC
Ania Landy is the Community Research Coach for the Building Capacity project for the Fraser/Sunshine Coast site. Ania supports organizations and communities to address inclusivity and stigma related to people with lived experiences of dementia and their care partners. Ania has a Bachelor of Therapeutic Recreation, and a Master of Science in Health Sciences, and is currently a PhD student. She has over 10 years of experience collaborating with diverse communities on community-based participatory research initiatives. She is passionate about supporting innovative and creative community work that addresses critical social issues, with a specific focus on aging and dementia. Her research interests include an intersectional approach to understanding health inequities and promoting cultural change in the care of older people, within both community and institutional settings. In addition to her role on the Building Capacity project, Ania holds a faculty position at Douglas College in the Department of Therapeutic Recreation.
Email: ania.landy@ubc.ca
Paulina Malcolm
Community Research Coordinator, UBC
Paulina Malcolm is the Community Research Coordinator for several community-based research projects focused on addressing dementia-related stigma and promoting more dementia-inclusive spaces. She works closely with people with lived experience to better understand their social landscape, co-create research priorities, and support greater project engagement. Paulina has experience working on participatory action and co-design research projects in the field of dementia and older-adult mental health. She is interested in learning more about how to effectively collaborate with various community stakeholders and understanding new ways of doing research.
Email: paulina.malcolm@ubc.ca
Heather Neale Furneaux, MFA
Knowledge Mobilization Lead, UBC
Heather Neale Furneaux is the Knowledge Mobilization Lead for the Building Capacity Project, and she has been working in collaboration with the Flipping Stigma Action Group as well. She develops knowledge projects, coordinates webinars and planning sessions, and works in close collaboration with the team's Visual Communication Designer to produce social media campaigns and other stigma reducing initiatives. She also helps with media coverage and project promotion. Her background is in writing and teaching. She's written for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as developing corporate content and advertising packages over the years. Her writing often investigates the impact of trauma on identity and she's a big fan of covering social justice issues, making use of storytelling as a vehicle for social change.
Samantha Pineda Sierra, MFA
Visual Communication Designer, UBC
Samantha is the Visual Communication Designer of the Building Capacity Project. She works with researchers and dementia advocates developing tools, multimedia campaigns and visual solutions that translate concepts into appealing designs for various mediums, including film, digital platforms, print, branding, animation and more. In addition to her role at UBC, she is also a filmmaker and the co-founder of a multimedia production company that focuses on storytelling in different media art forms. Along her career, Samantha has work with agencies and international brands directing commercials and advertising campaigns for Mexico and Latin America. She has also worked with different arts, culture and film organizations promoting visual literacy and local cinema. She has been an instructor and a consultant in accelerator programs for young filmmakers and a jury in diverse film festivals across the country. She holds a BA in Science Communication and an MFA in Film Production and Creative Writing from UBC.
Email: samantha.pineda@ubc.ca
Elaine Wiersma, PhD
Academic Lead, Lakehead University
Elaine Wiersma is the Director of the Centre for Education and Research on Aging & Health, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Lakehead University. She has completed her Master’s and PhD at the University of Waterloo. Having spent many years working with older adults in practice and research, particularly individuals with dementia, Elaine’s research aims to tell people’s stories in ways that challenge stereotypes and misconceptions of older people, particularly persons with dementia. Advocacy, inclusion, and rights form the fundamental values underlying her work with people with dementia. Using participatory qualitative methodologies, her research spans community and long-term care, exploring aging and dementia care, contexts of rural and northern communities, and quality of life issues.
Email: ewiersma@lakeheadu.ca
Nisha Sutherland
Co Investigator, Lakehead University
Nisha Sutherland is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at Lakehead University and research affiliate at the Centre for Education and Research on Aging and Health (CERAH). Focusing in the areas of gender, aging, and health, Dr. Sutherland critically analyzes how social relations shape health and health care experiences for people with chronic life-limiting illnesses. Building from her doctoral work, the focus of her research examines how the social determinants of health (e.g. geography, class, age gender, or race) intersect to shape health care experiences, particularly for people who are disadvantaged.
Email: nsutherl@lakeheadu.ca