Two new research chairs recently joined Aurora College. These positions play a significant role in driving innovative research and capacity development at Aurora College as it transforms into a polytechnic university.
We are thrilled to Welcome Dr. Sara Kornisky and Dr. Julián Idrobo
To learn more about Dr. Komarnisky, Research Chair, Health and Community: Click Here
To learn more about Dr. Idrobo, Research Chair, Indigenous Approaches to Environmental Management: Click Here
The positions are co-funded through ArcticNet, a Network of Centres of Excellence of Canada, providing $1.4 million to Aurora College, over four years, to help expand research capacity in the NWT.
Dr. Sara Komarnisky joins Aurora College in the position of Research Chair: Health and Community. Dr. Komarnisky holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of British Columbia and has over 15 years of experience with multidisciplinary and multimethod research projects grounded in community. Much of this work has been focused squarely on addressing health issues from a community level perspective to produce insightful knowledge and create policy change – from ethnography of transnational life, to material culture and archival research on hospital art and craft, to surveys about youth smoking and drinking, to community-based research to inform tuberculosis policy. She is the author of multiple publications including: Mexicans in Alaska: An Ethnography of Mobility, Place and Transnational Life (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), and 150 Acts of Reconciliation (with Dr. Crystal Fraser, 2017). Dr. Komarnisky will be based out of the North Slave Campus (Yellowknife).
Dr. Julián Idrobo joins Aurora College as Research Chair: Indigenous Approaches to Environmental Management. Dr. Idrobo holds a Ph.D. and Masters in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Manitoba and a BSc in Biology from Universidad del Cauca (Popayán, Colombia). He is an interdisciplinary scholar with strong commitment to building more sustainable and socially just environmental management research and practice based on Indigenous perspectives and the co-production of knowledge by multiple knowledge systems. His research program builds an environmental management perspective that integrates Indigenous peoples’ responses to globalization and environmental change through community-based initiatives that foster innovative environmental management and governance arrangements.