PEPR Partnership

Congrats to Karime Mescouto who participated in the Postdoctoral Research Sprint in last week’s Postdoctoral Forum at Western University! The research sprint inspires excellent communication skills by challenging participants to share their research in 120 seconds in a way that is engaging and easy to understand for a diverse audience. Karime came in third place and also won the People’s Choice award. Bravo! 🏆

Check out PEPR Co-Director Desmond Williams on Just Asking with Saroja Coelho on CBC discussing pain management, common myths, and how people and places can better support people living with chronic pain.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1424-just-asking

Just Asking with Saroja Coelho | Live Radio | CBC Listen You’ve got smart questions, we’ve got solid answers. If googling got you nowhere, you can always call your friend Saroja Coelho. With guest experts, Just Asking turns the week’s news and latest trends into tips that help you make better decisions about your life. Whether it’s tech, money, ca...

Check out Desmond Williams, along with colleagues Norm Buckley and Jennifer Daly-Cyr, on Just Asking with Saroja Coelho on CBC!

1-1424-just-asking@CBC" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1424-just-asking@CBC

Just Asking with Saroja Coelho | Live Radio | CBC Listen You’ve got smart questions, we’ve got solid answers. If googling got you nowhere, you can always call your friend Saroja Coelho. With guest experts, Just Asking turns the week’s news and latest trends into tips that help you make better decisions about your life. Whether it’s tech, money, ca...

Ready for our symposium!

Came down this morning to a new addition to our booth 🫑

We hope you will visit our booth in the exhibitor hall. We’re sharing our many studies and projects an we’d love to chat with fellow attendees about how we can support each other’s work.

We are thrilled to be together with so many esteemed colleagues and friends at ! Please join us for our symposium, “Critical Approaches to Pain Research: Insights from Research with Structurally Marginalized Communities” with Vanessa Ambtman-Smith, Anna Hood, and Kate Rice and chaired by Desmond Williams. Happening Friday May 1, 2:00-3:15, 3rd floor room 301B.

🎙️NEW - Living Proof: Experience as Evidence in Pain Research

Episode 3, part 2: Cultural Pathways to Meaningful Engagement with Dr Vanessa Ambtman-Smith

Co-hosts Desmond Williams and Emerald Asuncion continue the conversation with Vanessa. They talk about honouring relationality and lived expertise as evidence while going deeper into Vanessa’s research on what happens when Indigenous healing spaces open within Western healthcare. They discuss the medicine wheel as a metaphor for imbalance and how bringing culture into care can “reinflate” spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical wellness. Desmond shares his own chronic pain experience and the need for safe, non-triggering spaces, along with the nervous-system practices rooted in the four directions. Vanessa explains imperatives in Indigenous health research, reciprocity, and protocols, emphasizing participants as sacred knowledge holders.

❓What do YOU think? How do we meaningfully build spaces where the medicine wheel can move smoothly?

Check it out and subscribe to on your favourite platform:|
🔗YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/XLn_V46sjxM
🔗SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LTIK4BdjjbhJF9jDPXyPO?si=msxdMEkTRJer2LFQT_F8_A
🔗APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-3-part-2-cultural-pathways-to-meaningful-engagement/id1838608843?i=1000761822072

is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

Episode 3 , Part 2: Cultural Pathways to Meaningful Engagement Podcast Episode · Living Proof: Experience as Evidence in Pain Research · April 16 · 27m

We're please to share our first quarterly newsletter of 2026!

We're already having a great, productive year at . Please have a look, and connect with us if you have questions or ideas about our research.

New publication!

Congratulations to Kathleen Rice, Ginetta Salvalaggio, Laura Connoy, and Fiona Webster on their new publication in SSM - Qualitative Research in Health. This work, through the CIHR-funded COPE II grant, examines how systems of income support for Canadians living with chronic pain operate as forms of structural violence.

Trapped in the labyrinth: The structural violence of disability support for people with chronic pain
Read it here:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2026.100744