Mark S. Dolson

Mark earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology (with a research focus on urban anthropology and homelessness) in 2012 from Western University; an MA in the Anthropology of Medicine from McGill University; and an Honours BA in Anthropology from Western University. Mark completed a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) funded Postdoctoral Fellowship focusing on homelessness, addiction, political violence and social suffering in Reykjavik, Iceland through the Scott Polar Research Institute in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Before completing his Ph.D., he worked as an applied anthropologist for the Department of Paediatrics at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University as well as at the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. While part of the Department of Paediatrics, he carried out an ethnographic research project which sought to understand the culture of medicine, power dynamics between medical residents and their teachers in the context of medical education at the Children’s Emergency Department at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. During Mark's time at the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine, he took part in developing research projects centered on youth Indigenous health issues in remote First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. Mark’s current research and teaching expertise are in ethnographic approaches to homelessness and mental illness (particularly trauma, addiction and their socio-political causes); as well as critical approaches to neoliberalism, workfare, moral regulation, and policy related to poverty reduction and housing/re-housing the homeless in both Canada and Iceland. Following his SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, Mark is continuing research on an ethnographic approach to homeless and marginalized subjectivities in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is attempting to trace ethnographically the shifting contours of one informants’ experience with hoarding, her self-exile into homelessness and extreme existential suffering resulting from political violence and paternalistic attitudes towards the homeless.