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FASS News, Faculty
Welcome Dr. Mary-Ellen Kelm, Associate Dean, Research & International
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is pleased to welcome Dr. Mary-Ellen Kelm as she begins a three-year term as Associate Dean, Research & International on September 1, 2020. Kelm previously served as the Associate Dean in the Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies.
Professor Kelm first came to SFU from Windsor, Ontario, in 1987 as a master’s student to study the history of women in Riverview Hospital, a psychiatric institution. After completing her PhD research at the University of Toronto on the impact of colonization on the health and healing of Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia, Kelm returned to B.C. in 1994 to join the history department at the University of Northern British Columbia while taking on a postdoctoral fellowship working with the Nisga’a to learn how they were building health services that better suited the needs of their people.
In 2006, she returned to SFU to take up a Canada Research Chair in Health, Medicine and Society with the Department of History.
“I’m looking forward to promoting the research enterprise within FASS,” Kelm says. “The research of research is what I do for my own work so I’m interested in the broader contexts of academic research. Understanding faculty members’ research goals and supporting their achievement is going to be an enjoyable part of the position.”
“Mary-Ellen Kelm is an advocate for community based and community engaged research, with a strong track record in mentoring graduate students,” says FASS Dean Jane Pulkingham. “I look forward to working with her to continue to build FASS’ capacity to support its researchers, faculty and students alike, to bring visibility to the diversity of scholarship we engage, and to advance FASS’ internationalization goals.”
Away from SFU, Kelm plays the canine sport of agility with her dog Dixie (a miniature poodle).
“Dog training is learning and it's about teamwork,” she says. “I'm looking forward to being a part of another great team at FASS.”
Watch Mary-Ellen Kelm compete with Dixie in the canine sport of agility.