Michelle N Lafrance

Michelle Lafrance’s research interests have always been rooted in the everyday realities of women’s lives as she has explored their challenges around depression and distress, stigma around mental illness, leisure and self-care (or lack thereof), and experiences of sexuality. Across these projects, Michelle has also maintained a focus on resistance and women’s efforts to overcome challenge and live well. The quality of this work has been recognised internationally, including by the British Psychological Society (Citation for Excellence), the (American) Association for Women in Psychology (Distinguished Publication Award), and the Canadian Psychological Association (Certificate of Academic Excellence).

Michelle Lafrance’s current research examines the experiences of informal (family) caregivers of older adults in New Brunswick. This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development Grant) and is being conducted with the dual aims of contributing to the scholarship in the critical social sciences and providing evidence-based directions for social and political change. In beginning this research, Michelle interviewed informal caregivers of older adults ‘aging in place’ across New Brunswick. The process of conducting these in-depth interviews enabled her to ground her developing research ideas in the concerns and experiences of the very people she hoped the research would benefit. Moreover, she reports that it illuminated the need to expand her methodological expertise beyond discourse and thematic analyses. In listening to the accounts of informal caregivers, Michelle came to appreciate the need to more fully capture the complex interplay between the psychological, social and political – in particular in relation to institutional policies and practices. Further, she developed an appreciation of informal caregivers as a critically important, but often invisible and marginalised population within the health system. Consequently, Michelle became intrigued by the unique potential offered by the Psycho-Social Ethnography of the Commonplace, a methodology that was developed by the two Co-Investigators, Lynne Gouliquer and Carmen Poulin. The P-SEC methodology is perfectly suited to this project as it centres on the perspectives of marginalised groups and aims to develop social and political change strategies to benefit these groups and thus society. Michelle feels that collaboration with Drs Gouliquer and Poulin is invaluable in scaffolding her expertise to include this innovative methodology.