Congratulations to Assistant Professors Avery Everhart and Kate Hale who received the 2024/25 Dean of Arts Faculty Research Award. This annual award supports faculty to focus solely on research while providing teaching and administrative relief for a semester. Medical geographer Dr. Everhart (she/her) will be devoting her time to her current book project Beyond Binary Data: The Role of Data, Statistics, and (Mis)Information in Shaping Transgender Life. This timely ongoing research project examines the role “mis” and “dis” information play in shaping transgender life and access to health care in the US.
“Bad data about trans people becomes snappy statics that then becomes the gateway to things like QAnon and the conspiracy theory world,” explains Everhart.
In an era of ever-expanding disinformation and the active rollback of trans and other minority groups’ rights and protections within the current conservative and right-wing political climate, work like Dr. Everhart’s has become absolutely crucial. Dis information (divorced from its origins and intentionally misleading) and misinformation (false or inaccurate, without context) about trans people can turn catchy statistics into harmful claims. For example, a popular statistic that has been circulating is that “40% of trans people have considered or attempted suicide1”. But without proper context and source citing, this statement can be used to suggest something is “wrong” within the trans community, rather than the fact that there is something wrong with society’s treatment of trans folks. Intended to support trans people and advocate for better health services and support, the same statistic changes meaning based on audience, the speaker or location it is communicated in. Dr. Everhart argues more needs to be done across the board to be ensure specificity and methodological rigor is used when working with quantitative data.
The Beyond Binary Data project looks at bite sized pieces of statistical misinformation that circulate inside and outside of trans communities. Using qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate their circulation Everhart aims to build a better understand of how we use data about trans people to shape the conditions in which trans people live their lives.
“There is so much urgency right now given the situation in the states that we are rapidly losing our capacity for nuance. I want to ensure my call for change isn’t divisive or accusatory, but rather educational for the transformation of the misinformation pipeline. In order to have a united front we need to come correct, otherwise we will have bigger problems ahead of us,” Everhart reflects.
Snow hydrologist Dr. Kate Hale’s (she/her) research program focuses on how the snowpack interacts with both the climate and downstream water resources at local to continental scales. Her work provides significant opportunities to map the distribution of snow water resources, learn about potential ecological and water management challenges, and develop mitigation strategies in a changing climate.
With her research award, Dr. Hale will establish new and expand existing long-term snowpack and meteorological monitoring sites as she builds her research program and collaborative network across BC and Canada. Focusing on field efforts and refining related observational, remote sensing, and modeling workflows at an early career stage, Dr. Hale plans to facilitate an efficient and scalable framework to support future students and research projects. Dr. Hale’s field season takes place in the winter. Establishing and operating these stations requires weeks of time in the field, travel to remote locations, coordinating with collaborators and airborne campaigns, installing and calibrating instruments, and capturing validation information in potentially cold, harsh environments.
“Laying this groundwork now is essential not only for advancing my own snow water resources laboratory and research, but for providing students with invaluable training opportunities in field-based snow and climate science, which will complement lab-based projects as well,” explains Hale.
Balancing teaching and research time is a key challenge for faculty, enabling them to progress their impactful work. As new faculty to our department, Dr. Everhart and Hale look forward to the opportunity to advance their work with support the Dean of Arts Research Award provides.
“This award allows me to be very intentional about how I engage with my students. I will be able to pour more into my own relationships and mentorships with my grad students. As well as travel more for research and conferences. I’ll have more freedom to see where the research takes me. Not to mention giving me more time to focus on the book,” says Everhart.
“This award will enable me to deeply dedicate my time and energy to these foundational and time-dependent fieldwork activities, some of which will take place with collaborators and students only during the upcoming snow season. I look forward to ensuring the successful establishment and operation of snow water resource monitoring sites, partnerships, and workflows that will provide invaluable information for water users and fuel critical science for years to come,” says Hale.
We look forward to seeing where the dedicated research over the next term will take these two standout faculty. Surely both the Department of Geography and our students will benefit from these advances in their fields.
1 The specific numbers depend on the source data, but similar figures have been circulating since at least 2011. First in the 2008 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 41% was reported: Grant, Jaime M., Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Washington: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011. Then in 2015, the United States Transgender Survey reported 40%: James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. (2016).
Executive Summary of the Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality. Finally, the TransPOP survey, which finished data collection in 2018, reports roughly 42% of trans people have at least one suicide attempt in their life: Kidd, J. D., Tettamanti, N. A., Kaczmarkiewicz, R., Corbeil, T. E., Dworkin, J. D., Jackman, K. B., Hughes, T. L., Bockting, W. O., & Meyer, I. H. (2023). Prevalence of substance use and mental health problems among transgender and cisgender U.S. adults: Results from a national probability sample. Psychiatry Research, 326, 115339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115339
Quick links:
- Read the announcement from the Faculty of Arts
- Learn more about Dr. Avery Everhart’s work
- Learn more about Dr. Kate Hale’s work
