Dr. Christine Añonuevo wins Governor General’s Gold Medal

Congratulations to HARC contributor Dr. Christine Añonuevo, the 2025 Governor General’s Gold Medal recipient for outstanding achievement in a graduate program. She completed her PhD in Health Sciences with a 4.33 grade point average while working, volunteering, and raising her young family.

After graduating with a degree in English from McGill University, Christine worked in international and community development and for experiential youth-led education programs such as Katimavik and Canada World. This work allowed Christine to live in many rural and remote communities across BC, the United States, Japan, Ukraine, and South Africa and to understand pressing issues youth face, such as the climate crisis, the impact of natural resource extraction on communities in the Global South, and health issues related to ongoing colonialism and imperialism around the world and in her home province of BC.

Christine returned to graduate school when her youngest son was 10 months old. While working as an educational advisor at the local community college in Hazelton, she completed her Master of Adult Education and Community Development from St. Francis Xavier University. She was the recipient of the John Dobson Award for Adult Education. She began her PhD during the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. She was fully funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s prestigious Joseph-Armand Bombardier Award. As a first-generation Filipina university graduate, she is the daughter of working-class arrivants from the Philippines, who left their homeland due to the onset of Martial Law, who did not graduate from university nor speak English as their first language, and who continue to experience ongoing health issues as a result of socio-economic marginalization.

Motivated by her parents’ lived experiences, her research examined the health stories of 10 women co-researchers across northern B.C. She traced historical, social, institutional, and ongoing colonial forces in the lives of Indigenous, Black, and Filipinx women’s experiences, but also outlined how many of them redefine these terms in their relational and community-based care networks. Using kuwentuhan, a Tagalog conversational method of storysharing and storytelling, she analyzed how these women’s health stories, in relationship to their bodies, the land, the water, and air, refuse structural and systemic racism. Christine is an appointed member of the Provincial Committee on Anti-Racism, where she continues to advocate as a volunteer for approaches to address intersecting forms of anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-Asian racism and other overlapping forms of oppression.

Christine continues to share stories as the publisher and editor of Northword Magazine. Northword is the only independent publication serving the entire region of northern BC. Christine feels a responsibility to share the stories of what it’s like to live in the north: the culture, the people, the issues, the lifestyle, the landscapes, and wants to inspire readers to connect more closely with the region, through writing and photography that is both unique and exceptional. Check out Northword Magazine on Facebook and Instagram @Northword_new_beginnings.

As a daughter, mother, sister, Tita, community member, creative writer, interdisciplinary artist, and critical scholar, Christine continues to explore poetry, arts-based methods, and storytelling to connect with diasporic communities, find joy, and uplift often-invisibilized and overlooked voices.

Christine is grateful for her time at UNBC, particularly for her wonderful colleagues at the Health Arts Research Centre. She wishes to thank her supervisor, Dr. Sarah de Leeuw, and her supervisory committee, which is composed of We’es T’es Sandra Martin Harris, Dr. Rita Wong from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Dr. May Farrales from Simon Fraser University, Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, her external examiner, and Dr. Caroline Sanders from UNBC as the chair of her defense, as well as the remarkable women co-researchers who participated in her research.

Christine’s dissertation is available here: https://unbc.arcabc.ca/islandora/object/unbc%3A59585