Ayelet Kuper MD DPhil FRCPC
Scientist and Associate Director Faculty Affairs- The Wilson Centre
Senior Fellow, Massey College - University of Toronto
Professor - Department of Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Dr Ayelet Kuper's research program focuses on the relationship between currently accepted epistemologies and knowledge production modalities within medical and medical education research on the legitimacy and/or limitations of particular subject areas within mainstream health professions education research and within health professional curricula. Her work, which provides evidence for the need to broaden current definitions of legitimate medical knowledge, has important implications for teaching and learning about key patient-care-related concepts such as equity, power, culture, justice, and reflexivity. These concepts both enhance daily clinical and educational encounters and enable physicians to address the structural and process-related challenges that currently hinder their ability to provide equitable care.
Dr Kuper strives to bring theoretical and methodological perspectives from her humanities and social sciences background to areas of health professions education research which have evolved within limiting epistemological frameworks. She is involved in publications and knowledge translation activities designed to enhance clinicians' understanding of qualitative methods in healthcare and related research. She is also actively involved in implementation and knowledge translation activities related to her research, particularly with respect to introducing and legitimizing non-bioscientific knowledge within medical and other health professional curricula at multiple sites across Ontario.
Dr Kuper graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in Biology in 1994. She completed graduate school in Medieval and Modern Languages at Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, receiving a Masters degree (Research Methods in Modern Languages) in 1995 and a Doctorate two years later. In 1997 she enrolled in medical school and then in an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Toronto, finishing her clinical training as a Chief Medical Resident (University Health Network/Mount Sinai Hospital) in 2004-2005. Between 2005 and 2007 she undertook a Masters degree in Education (Health Professions specialization) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a Fellowship at the Wilson Centre for Research in Education. She joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto in 2007 as an Internist based at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where she attends on the General Medicine wards 9 weeks per year. Dr. Kuper is an Associate Professor, Clinician-Scientist, and Co-Lead for Person-Centred Care Education in the Department of Medicine, a Centre Scientist and Associate Director (Membership and Faculty Affairs) at the Wilson Centre for Research in Education, a Cross-Appointed Faculty Member at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and a Senior Fellow at Massey College, all at the University of Toronto.
A full list of Dr. Kuper's publications can be found on her website at http://www.ayeletkuper.ca/
Current Fellows and HPER Doctoral Students: Laura Brereton, Joanna Krongold, Gianni Lorello
Current Fellows and HPER Doctoral Students
Laura Brereton
Laura Brereton is a Research Fellow at the Wilson Centre, and a PhD student in the Health Professions Education Research (HPER) doctoral concentration offered by the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, in collaboration with the faculty of the Wilson Centre, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Her doctoral work focuses on the nature of shared decision-making between patients and clinicians, and the ways healthcare relationships are enabled and limited by institutional power structures. She is interested in the potential of reflective writing and other applied humanities to enrich clinical education. Laura previously managed the clinical practice guideline development program and various graduate medical education projects for the National Kidney Foundation in New York City, and worked as a healthcare analyst for RAND Corporation in Cambridge, UK. She has an MSc in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a certification in narrative medicine from Columbia University. Laura is also the recipient of the Kimel-Schatzky Scholarship at the Wilson Centre for 2021-2024.
Supervisor: Ayelet Kuper
Brett A. Diaz
Brett A. Diaz is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS). He completed his PhD in Applied Linguistics at Penn State in 2021, and a postdoctoral fellowship in health professions education research at Unity Health in 2023. His work centres on emotion in social phenomena, social aspects of health policy implementation, and praxis in health professions education. Most recently, he was Lead for Knowledge Mobilization Research and Learning Enrichment at CAMH, where he helped to create equity-based user centred processes and methods, and led research initiatives on improving trustworthiness in evidence-informed resources.
Supervisors: Ayelet Kuper, Joanne Goldman
Gianni Lorello
Gianni R. Lorello is an anesthesiologist at University Health Network and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on access to healthcare and social justice within Anesthesiology, and Medicine more broadly. Specifically, he looks at better understanding the norms, expectations, rules, policies, and institutional processes that govern how work is performed and how people interact with the greater societal structures - known as relations of ruling. These ruling relations are found in texts, photographs, policies, regulations, and institutional guidelines which govern people from afar. These practices and texts are not neutral and are oftentimes produced by people in power, thereby reinforcing the interests and ideals of these people in power. Gianni looks at highlighting these ruling relations and how they go unnoticed by understanding the disconnections between lived experiences and these ruling relations, thereby uncovering how institutional power is maintained and reinforced through seemingly ordinary organizational practices and procedures, privileging certain interests while marginalizing others.
Supervisor: Ayelet Kuper
Joanna Krongold
Joanna Krongold is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Wilson Centre investigating antisemitism in health professions education. She is jointly appointed at the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity. Joanna obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto's Department of English in 2020, focusing on Holocaust literature written for children and young adults. Her current work explores the intersections between antisemitism and the COVID-19 pandemic, EDI and social justice-oriented education, experiential learning, and Holocaust memory, literature, and pedagogy. She has taught at many levels in both university- and community-based settings, and her scholarly monograph is forthcoming in 2024 from Lexington Books.
Supervisors: Ayelet Kuper, Lisa Richardson