Suzanne Robertson

Suzanne Robertson (she/her) is a Scottish immigrant to Treaty 1, mother, student and community-based practitioner. For 20 years, she has worked in a variety of community-based spaces including programs for sexual violence and intimate partner violence, suicide prevention, care and intervention, crisis assessment and intervention as well as child protection services. It is through the experiences in these workspaces that she seeks to ensure and promote spaces where community voices and lived experiences are represented, visible and accounted for within academia. For her Master’s thesis, ‘Families Being Heard’, Suzanne shared a collection of conversations that she had with Indigenous Mothers who gifted her their stories and experiences with the Manitoba child welfare system.

Suzanne is now approaching their second year as a PhD student in the College of Community and Global Health where she is studying discourses in healthcare; how they contribute to, or disrupt the racism experienced by Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks accessing healthcare in Manitoba. This summer, she is working alongside the CHRR as a student researcher to review Bill 48 ‘The Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act’, and develop and develop a library to house academic, grey, and community generated literature on the topic.

When not engulfed in community work or research, Suzanne like to hike, read and paint. This summer, Suzanne hopes to spend some beautiful joyful time with her 10-year-old exploring. It is his masterful photography skills, during one of their many adventures, that captured the picture shared in Suzanne’s bio.