Kristin Burnett, PhD (she/her/they) is a settler historian who has worked extensively in academia and with not-for profit organizations and grassroots organizations in community engagement and program evaluation. She has worked with Indigenous communities to develop research objectives and strategic plans that support capacity building and knowledge mobilization. She is responsible to the communities she works with to generate knowledge that is meaningful and actionable.

Broadly, Kristin’s research and policy work  investigates the challenges many people face accessing health care, social services, and food. For example, Kristin worked with community members from Fort Albany First Nation and Food Secure Canada to draft a national report on food costing entitled “Paying for Nutrition: A Report on Food Costing in the North.” She has also done extensive work on the federal food subsidy programs (e.g. Nutrition  North Canada) and northern retail food environments.  More recently, Kristin has worked with legal clinics and health organizations in northern Ontario to identify barriers experienced by individuals living without personal identification, especially birth certificates.  Under COVID-19, people are facing further difficulties accessing basic services due to a lack of personal identification. Kristin has collaborated with community members and organizations regarding a policy statement on the impact of COVID on Indigenous Food sovereignty and on a joint submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Kristin has published extensively on a variety of Indigenous health issues, and she is particularly interested in how the social determinants of health affect the well-being of individuals and communities that have been marginalized. Much of her work seeks to identify those systemic barriers that produce disproportionately poorer health outcomes for Indigenous communities. For example, she recently published a piece on  racism, access to health care, and vaccine hesitancy.

She also has a great deal of editorial experience. Kristin served as the managing editor of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History for five years, shepherding manuscripts through the publishing process. Kristin has worked with a diverse range of manuscripts at various stages of readiness, and with individuals at different career stages and trajectories.  Her goal is to help individuals develop the skills necessary to engage with academic publishing in a confident manner.

Research ethics lie at the centre of all good research projects. Kristin has over ten years of experience working on research ethics boards (REB) at universities, as well as drafting REB applications for a variety of different projects. She is currently the chair of the Research Ethics Board at Lakehead University and has been instrumental in drafting policies on conflict of interest, equity and diversity, and most recently, COVID-19.