Research profile: Isabelle Caron

Dr. Isabelle Caron is an assistant professor at the School of Public Administration. She holds a PhD in public administration and an MA in Sociology from the University of Ottawa and a multidisciplinary BA from Université Laval. Dr. Caron’s research focuses on control, performance, accountability, integrity, diversity and intersectionality in the public sector and public policy. Before joining Dalhousie, she worked for 13 years as a senior policy analyst in various federal departments and central agencies.

Dr. Caron is the principal investigator on a SSHRC Insight Development Grant project (2019–2022) and on a Department of National Defence Research Initiative Grant (2019–2020) that aim to understand women’s perception of the Canadian Armed Forces as an obstacle to female retention. She is also the principal investigator on a Research Support Grant from the Government of Quebec to develop a book that explores the attention given to the Francophonie in public policy in Canada. Finally, Dr. Caron is a co-investigator on a Digital Ecosystem Research Challenge Grant that studies the attention paid to Indigenous issues on Twitter by candidates in the last federal election.

Dr. Caron’s works-in-progress include an examination of the impact on development and implementation of public policies of growing centralization in the Canadian government; a study of performance management drivers in local governments in Canada, Switzerland and Germany; a project on screen fatigue and learning effectiveness/satisfaction in online learning environments; the federal, provincial and municipal governments’ COVID-19 crisis communication strategies and an international comparison of control and accountability measures and their relation to public integrity.