JIBC Research Associates are distinguished professionals or subject matter experts who undertake or advise on applied research activities at JIBC.
The Associates bring knowledge and outside expertise in their particular fields to research projects. They may work independently or collaboratively with administrators, faculty or researchers within JIBC and with other institutions on joint projects.
Research Associates possess excellent academic, professional qualifications and/or distinguished service records. Their work is at the graduate level or they have a terminal degree in their field, with five or more years of research experience. Experience as a primary investigator, co-investigator or research collaborator is essential. A highly credible and/or experienced practitioner could possess expert knowledge and skills to be a JIBC Research Associate.
Individuals are nominated by a JIBC Dean and follow a nomination approval process. Once approved they are appointed for an honorary three-year term.
JIBC Research Associates
Dr. Doug Abrahamson
School of Criminal Justice & Security
Key Interests
Information and knowledge sharing within and across police/security organizations; information use outcomes; team business coaching; harassment and bullying in uniformed service organizations; restorative justice; evidence-based policing; police/security planning, research and auditing capabilities; and dual-sector learning.
Summary
Doug’s blend of 35 years of police training and major crime investigation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Victoria Police Department (VICPD), combined with advanced levels of education and experience in business management and public policy, give him a unique lens in viewing the inner workings of police/security organizations and understanding the challenges they face within our ever-changing globalized environment.
Dr. Abrahamson has the macro and microanalytical vision, tools and skills to help police and security organizations build internal capacity and resilience and to make sound recommendations for substantive policy and practice improvements.
Dr. Carol Amaratunga
School of Public Safety; School of Health, Community & Social Justice; School of Criminal Justice & Security
Key Interests
Population Health; Youth, Gender and HIV/AIDS; Community Risk Assessment and Resilient Recovery.
Summary
Carol Amaratunga was the first appointed Dean, Applied Research, JIBC in 2008 and held the position until her retirement in 2011. During her tenure as Dean, Carol helped to build institutional research capacity at the JIBC, to mentor a cadre of JIBC faculty and researchers, and manage a research portfolio in excess of $10 million dollars.
As a JIBC Research Associate ‘Emerita’, Carol continues to serve as a JIBC Principal Investigator/Co-Investigator on a number of national and international research projects and initiatives. She continues to represent JIBC as a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment (University of Salford, UK) and the Prehospital and Disaster Medicine Journal (Cambridge University). In addition, she continues in her role as a member of the CIETCanada Research Ethics Board.
Carol currently holds honorary adjunct professor/faculty appointments with the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa and the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria.
DR. Greg Anderson
School of Criminal Justice & Security
Key Interests
Occupational physiology, Public Safety Personnel health and well-being, Physical employment standards
Summary
Dr. Anderson is the former Dean, Office of the Applied Research & Graduate Studies, at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC), and Associate Director, Police Services for the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment. He has provided oversight as Investigator and/or Administrative Lead with the application and management of individual and collaborative applied research projects totaling over $38 million in the last seven years. His research interests lie in occupational fitness and wellness, and occupational physiology of physically demanding occupations.
He has developed and assessed an online learning tool for first responders to improve their personal resilience prior to deployment and has recent publications in occupational and organizational stress and the mental health and well-being of public safety personnel. He is well published in both pure science and practitioner journals, and has been an invited speaker at regional, national and international venues where he translates “the science” for practitioners, providing them with a better understanding of the fundamental theory behind popular practice.
Dr. Jim Carter
School of Public Safety; School of Health, Community & Social Justice
Key Interests
Exercise and work physiology with research in ergonomics, heat stress in firefighters, firefighter fitness assessments, quantification of fitness training, the effect of endurance training on cardiovascular dynamics, the effectiveness of firefighter rapid intervention teams.
Dr. Adam Lund
School of Health, Community & Social Justice
Key Interests
Mass gathering and event medicine, prehospital care, disaster medicine, public health and systems research in clinical emergency medicine, emergency medicine, public health and harm reduction.
Summary
Adam is a clinical associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UBC. His goal is to promote the research interests of his colleagues and to grow the research capacity and infrastructure for emergency medicine within Fraser Health.
Dr. Jessica Motherwell
School of Criminal Justice & Security
Key Interests
Diversity and social justice; gender identity and equity; feminist scholarship and research; developmental psychology; and graphic narratives as learning tools.
Summary
Dr. Motherwell’s research interests include empirically investigating stereotypes, prejudices, implicit bias and discrimination; conducting intersectional analyses of and inquiries about how gender, racial, indigenous, religious, ability, and other identities affect equity; using graphic narrative techniques to empower at-risk youth and other vulnerable or marginalized groups; exploring educational methods that can best help learners celebrate diversity, unlearn biases, and stand up to inequities in the classroom, workplace and community; and determining how best to increase the participation of women and marginalized groups in careers in which these groups are typically underrepresented.
Dr. Laurie Pearce
School of Public Safety; School of Health, Community & Social Justice
Key Interests
Indigenous and Mainstream Community Disaster Resiliency; Psychosocial Impacts of Disasters on Emergency Responders; and Managing Trauma for Disaster-Impacted Communities.
Summary
Dr. Pearce has participated in and managed numerous research projects in the field in disaster management. She continues to assist governments and other organizations in policy evaluation, developing and auditing emergency and business continuity plans, evaluating post-emergency exercises, and providing training and education.
Laurie is a part-time associate faculty member at Royal Roads University, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and the Justice Institute of British Columbia where she teaches for the School of Public Safety at the undergraduate and certificate level. She also teaches for the School of Health, Community & Social Justice.
Dr. Valerie Spicer
School of Public Safety
Key Interests
Computational Criminology, Policing and Crime Prevention, and Chronic Offenders and Property Crime.
Summary
Valerie Spicer’s research interests are focused on fear and the perception of crime in the urban domain. This includes the perceptual mapping of this phenomenon as well as the manner in which this problem is managed by civic and policing agencies. This research interest includes crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) strategies and problem-solving partnerships between key stakeholder groups. Her research spans the field of pro-active policing initiatives that encompass offender management, situational crime prevention and youth prevention initiatives.
Valerie is a member of two research groups at Simon Fraser University, one which centres on Canadian urban studies (ICURS) and the other which researches various modelling techniques (MoCSSy).
Dr. Sheila Turris
School of Health, Community & Social Justice
Key Interests
Mass gathering health, public safety, health promotion/harm reduction.
Summary
In terms of a research program Sheila Turris has a passionate and long-standing interest in the provision of, and the links between, out-of-hospital care and emergency services. Her research has been in the growing field of mass gathering health. Sheila continues to partner with the JIBC and interested affiliates in carrying out research to strengthen the links between pre-hospital and acute care services, with a focus on mass gathering health and minimizing the impact of special events on local communities.
Dr. Adam Vaughan
School of Health, Community & Social Justice
Key Interests
Policing, Health Criminology, Mental Health and Substance Use Policy, Environmental Criminology.
Summary
Dr. Adam Vaughan’s research interests focus on producing empirical evidence of the quality and quantity of persons with severe mental illness found within the criminal justice system. Dr. Vaughan joined Texas State University as an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice in 2018 and was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Vaughan also worked as a health policy fellow through the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and held research positions at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies at SFU and also JIBC