Sarah de Leeuw

Sarah de Leeuw, a creative writer and human geographer, is a Professor and Canada Research Chair (Humanities and Health Inequities) with the University of Northern British Columbia’s (UNBC) Northern Medical Program (NMP), the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Between 2012 and 2020, she held a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Career Investigator Scholar with the the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health (NCCIH) where she has been a Research Associate for more than a decade. Her academic research—funded by CIHR, SSHRC, and MSFHR, focuses on health inequalities, creative arts and critical humanities, marginalized geographies, colonial violence, and Indigenous peoples. Her research appears in more that 140 scholarly and creative publications. Author or co-editor of eleven books, including creative works nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Prize (Where it Hurts – https://newestpress.com/books/where-it-hurts) and awarded the Dorthey Livesay BC Book Award (Geographies of a Lover), de Leeuw is also a two time recipient of a CBC Literary Prize for non-fiction and holds a Western Magazine Gold Award. In recognition of her outstanding interdisciplinary contributions across the country and beyond, de Leeuw was appointed in 2017 to The Royal Society of Canada, the College of New Scholars Artists and Scientists. She grew up on Haida Gwaii, finished high school in Terrace, and now divides her time between Northern British Columbia and the Okanagan Valley.