Fiona Webster, PhD

Welcome! My name is Fiona Webster. I am a sociologist, trained institutional ethnographer (IE) and Professor and Associate Director of Nursing Research in the Labatt Family School of Nursing at Western University. I am cross-appointed associate professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Toronto. I am also Director of the PEPR Partnership and Founder of CASPR.

My program of research is built upon a career-long interest in applying the tools, theories and insights of sociology to explore and improve the care of people living with chronic pain using largely ethnographic approaches. I conduct research at the intersection between health and culture and its impact on health equity, and social determinants of health.

“To truly rethink pain, we must also reconsider suffering, beginning in the everyday expert knowledge of people with chronic pain who can offer insights in relation to their bodies and also the organization of the social circumstances in which they live.”

— Webster, Fiona, et al. “Chronic struggle: An institutional ethnography of chronic pain and marginalization.” The Journal of Pain 24.3 (2023): 437-448.

I acknowledge that Western University is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations, on lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796 and the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. This land continues to be home to diverse Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit). With this, I respect the longstanding relationships that Indigenous Nations have to this land, as they are the original caretakers. I acknowledge historical and ongoing injustices that Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) endure in Canada.

FIONA WEBSTER, PhD

Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada