Donna Patrick

Biography

Donna Patrick is professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She is currently working (till 2018) on a SSHRC-funded research project entitled: “Out of Place in Nunalijjuaq: Effecting Social Change with Montreal Inuit through Participatory Action Research (PAR)”. Previous research has focused on multiliteracies, identity, and community-building among urban Inuit in Ottawa, with the goal of exploring life histories and what literacy means for Inuit who now reside in Southern cities. This includes research on policy, social semiotics, and critical literacy studies. Other interests lie in the broader area of Indigeneity and urban Aboriginality in Canada; and the political, social, and cultural aspects of language use, with a focus on language endangerment discourse, language revitalization, and Aboriginal languages in Canada. Her 2003 book, Language Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community (Mouton de Gruyter), the edited volume, Language Rights and Language Survival (with Jane Freeland, St. Jerome Press) and a number of published articles and papers examine these issues. She teaches courses in Language, Culture, and Power and courses that focus on Indigeneity, in Canada and the Arctic. She is currently President of the Canadian Anthropology Society/ Société canadienne d’anthropologie (CASCA) from May 2016-May 2017 and the Associate Editor of the Canadian Modern Language Review (CMLR).

Research Interest

Linguistic ethnography, indigeneity; transnationalism and urbanization, Arctic, language endangerment and revitalization