Amanda Watson

Dr. Amanda D. Watson's research interests include care, labour, feelings, reproduction, disability, and media representation of maternal labour and identity. She teaches on global problems and the culture of capitalism, politics of family, the formation of self and identity in contemporary Western cultures, and power and conflict in Canadian society. Watson is an Associate Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies.

Current projects include Politics of Birthstrike, the Imagine Kin Project: Daydreaming Family Formation and Climate Losses in Metro Vancouver, and the Parent Feelings Project.

PhD (Feminist and Gender Studies), University of Ottawa
MSW, Carleton University
BA (Sociology), University of British Columbia

Care; labour; feelings; reproduction; disability; media representation of maternal labour and identity; the culture of capitalism; politics of family; the formation of self and identity in contemporary Western cultures; and power and conflict in Canadian society.

Books

• Watson, A. D. 2020. The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Watson, A. D. (2020). "Feminist Politics still needs motherhood." In L. Hall, L. Shepherd, A. Weissman (Eds.), Troubling Motherhood: (Re)Conceptualizing Maternity and the State in Global Politics, Past and Present and Future (181-196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Orr, C. & Watson, A. D. (2018). “We changed her nappies, we saw that she was a girl:” Caster Semenya’s femininity and the power of maternal testimony. In J. Battaglia, R. J. Bromwich, and P. M. Redela (Eds.) Mothering, Mothers, and Sport: Experiences, Representations, Resistances (15-48). Toronto: Demeter Press.
• Magnet, S. & Watson, A. D. (2017). How to get through the day with pain and sadness: An investigation of temporality and disability. In B. Kirkpatrick and E. Ellcessor (Eds.) Disability Media Studies: Media, Popular Culture, and the Meanings of Disability (247-271). New York: New York University Press.
• Watson, A. D. (2016). Quelling anxiety as intimate work: Maternal responsibility to eliminate bad feelings emerging from precarity, Studies in Social Justice, 10(2). Brock University: Social Justice Research Institute.

• 2021-23 Principal Investigator, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant, "Politics of Birthstrike"

• Radio interview, CBC The Early Edition, 12 May 2022 https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-91-the-early-edition?cmp=DM_SEM_Listen_Titles#episodes
  
• Radio interview, CBC Radio West, 4 May 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-96/clip/15910530
• Radio interview, CBC On the Coast, 3 May 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-46-on-the-coast/clip/15910243-the-mother-load-why-mums-leaving-workforce
  
• Amanda Watson, “After two years in the pandemic, mothers expressing rage are harnessing their power,” 8 Mar 2022,Conversation, Tyee: https://theconversation.com/after-two-years-in-a-pandemic-mothers-expressing-rage-are-harnessing-their-power-175809
• Video interview, Tamara Taggart, Telus Talks, 11 Jan 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLqheuKLcNo
  
• Interviewed and quoted, Atkinson Series: The Mother Load, Stephanie Nolen, 28 Jul 2021 https://www.thestar.com/news/atkinsonseries/2021/covid-19-working-mothers-child-care.html
• Book excerpted, Today’s Parent, 2 Dec 2020 https://www.todaysparent.com/family/family-life/the-anxiety-to-be-the-supermom-nearly-broke-me/
  
• Amanda Watson, “Society has come to expect the juggling act,” 20 Nov 2020, Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-expect-moms-to-juggle-now-in-a-pandemic-moms-need-to-say-that/
  
• Interviewed, quoted, Maclean’s, Marie-Danielle Smith, 17 Nov 2020 https://www.macleans.ca/society/2020-proved-that-womens-hard-earned-place-in-the-workforce-is-shakier-than-we-thought/
  Interviewed, quoted, and pictured, Vancouver Mom, Jenn Wint, 17 Nov 2020 https://www.vancouvermom.ca/for-mom/the-juggling-mother-has-dropped-the-ball/
  
• Television interview, CTV News, Keri Adams, 5 Oct 2020 https://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2049508
  
• Radio interview, News1130, Tarnjit Parmar, 23 Sept 2020 https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2020/09/23/working-mothers-feeling-impacts-covid/
• Interviewed, quoted and pictured in VITA, 18 Sept 2020 https://vitadaily.ca/2020/09/18/untangling-the-juggling-mother-a-chat-with-author-amanda-watson/
• Quoted in Point of View, CBC, 26 Jul 2020
• Radio interview, CBC The Early Edition, Amy Bell, 21 Jul 2020

Dr. Watson's role and FASS News article on FASS modernizes online learning (Sept 2019)