Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit

Director of TRRU

Dr. Janice E. Graham, Director of TRRU

Janice Graham (@JEGanthro) is a medical anthropologist, Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases), and former Canada Research Chair in Bioethics. Graham is interested in planetary health, building policies and practices for public health governance that can represent and include all people everywhere, the growing commercialization and private profits from publicly funded innovation, and opening evidence to scrutiny to improve public trust.

Focusing on safety, efficacy, and trust in the construction and legitimization of evidence, Graham’s research unpacks regulations, standards and activities in the development of emerging therapeutics and vaccines in Canada, Europe, and Africa. Graham has presented evidence to the Science Policy Directorate, Health Canada, Office of Legislative and Regulatory Modernization, the Parliament of Canada, World Health Organization, and United Nations on open data, regulatory risk of industry capture of research, and emergency response. She is the author of over 160 peer reviewed articles and book chapters and co-editor of The Social Life of Standards: Ethnographic Methods for Local Engagement (2021, UBC Press), Transparency, Power, and Influence in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Policy Gain or Confidence Game? (2021, U Toronto Press) and Contesting Aging and Loss (U Toronto Press 2010), as well as multiple reports on vaccines and public trust.

Professor Graham has been a visiting senior fellow at the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society, London School of Economics and Political Science (2006) and chaired Health Canada’s Expert Advisory Panel on the Special Access Program (2008). She was a consultant on the World Health Organization Global Vaccine Safety Blueprint (2010-12), a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for the WHO Guinea Ebola vaccine trials that produced the first effective Ebola vaccine, Visiting Professor at the WHO Meningitis Vaccine Project (2010) and at Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs: Ecologie, Génétique, Evolution et Contrôle (MIVEGEC), Centre de Recherche IRD, CNRS U Montpellier, France (2013-14) and at the University of Sydney (2021-22).

Graham graduated in Anthropology from the University of Waterloo (Hons BA 1980), University of Victoria (MA 1982), and the Université de Montréal (PhD 1997). She held a postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric medicine and neuroepidemiology at Dalhousie University (1996-1998). She was appointed Associate Professor and the inaugural Burwell Research Chair in Medical Anthropology (1998-2002) at the University of British Columbia. Graham is a past President of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d'anthropologie (CASCA), received the Weaver-Tremblay Medal for Distinguished Service in Applied Anthropology, Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) in 2016, was inducted as a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2017, and to the Royal Society of Canada in 2018 and Dalhousie University Research Professor (2018-2023).