Assistant Professor
Dr. Nicole Santos Dunn received her PhD from the Clinical and Counselling Psychology Program at the University of Toronto and completed her CPA-accredited residency at the University of British Columbia. Nicole’s research is multidisciplinary and grounded in critical suicidology. She is a Registered Psychologist in British Columbia and a Registered Psychotherapist in Ontario. Clinically, she works with a diversity of issues and is especially interested in working with painful and stuck emotions, as well as the stories that shape them. Nicole is a settler of Portuguese and Irish ancestry and grew up on the Williams Treaties in Whitby, Ontario. She is an uninvited guest and grateful visitor on gorgeous xʷməθkʷəy̓əm land.
Scholarly Interests:
Dr. Dunn’s research reckons with the ecological conditions that shape health and wellness (e.g., socio-political, cultural, and affective dimensions). She is especially interested in the gendered experience of livability across a variety of contexts and community driven practices for everyday care. The questions Nicole asks demand a multidisciplinary approach and as such her research spans clinical and counselling psychology, public health, and social policy. She is invested in critical scholarship that takes up anti-colonial, queer, and feminist methodologies and engages approaches that are grounded in ethics, consent, and the utmost respect for lived experience. While Nicole tends to privilege qualitative research and social engagement, she is also interested in survey design and randomized controlled trials.
Theoretical Orientation:
Process-Experiential
Compassion-Focussed
Anti-Oppressive
The 2026 application cycle is now closed.
Dr. Dunn provides mentorship and research opportunities for students interested in working in educational, social, and healthcare contexts. Opportunities are based in multidisciplinary research that centers critical methodologies, ethicality, and community-driven priorities.
2023
2020
2020-2024
2019
Marleen Biggs Memorial Award, University of Toronto
Ontario Graduate Scholarship, declined
Doctoral Award, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Jean Royce Fellowship, Queen’s University
Board of Directors, Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention
Public Health Agency of Canada Expert Roster in Suicide Prevention
CNPS 524 Counselling Adults
CNPS 588 Supervised Clinical Experience in Counselling
Some of Nicole’s current projects include:
Engagements with life: Restorying suicide with young women and femmes experiencing housing injustice
- Narrative and life course dimensions in understanding suicide for transitional aged women and femmes experiencing housing injustice (e.g., tenting, survival sex, couch surfing, renoviction)
- Socially engaged and arts-based methods exploring life promotion and community driven wellness (e.g., harm reduction, safety planning across a variety of milieus)
- Curriculum development for clinical and counselling psychology trainees in the areas of theorizing crisis, anti-oppressive practices/principles in suicide risk assessment, and safety planning
- www.engagementswithlife.ca
Sensing Suicide and Survival in Cities: Spatializing the Relationship Between Gender, Housing, and Suicide
- Co-theorizing livability with young women and femmes through a spatial, affective, and environmental analysis. This project takes up concepts from geography and studies of affect to make sense of access to care
- Explorations of community driven care and land-based wellness against extractivism
Ph.D University of Toronto, Clinical and Counselling Psychology
M.Ed University of Ottawa, Counselling Psychology
Diploma, George Brown College, Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counsellor/Advocate program (AWCCA)
BAH Queen’s University
Dunn, N. S, & Ansloos, J. P. (2024). Survival and resistance: A zine study with young women and femmes experiencing housing injustice in Canadian cities. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 10(2), 104-126.
https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v10i2.70842
Dunn, N. S., McVittie, J., Ansloos, J. P., Peltier, S. (2024). Mental health service providers knowledge of safety planning in the context of suicide risk assessments with Indigenous peoples. Practice Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1037/pri0000236
Dunn, N. S., McVittie, J., Ansloos, J. P., Obomsawin, A., & Azarshahi, S. (2023). First Nations and Inuit mental health and the Non-Insured Health Benefits program: Urgent priorities for evaluation. Canadian Journal of Public Health. 10.17269/s41997-023-00837-7
Edgar, N. E., Bennett, A., Dunn, N. S., MacLean, S. E., & Hatcher, S. (2022). Feasibility and acceptability of Narrative Exposure Therapy to treat individuals with PTSD who are homeless or vulnerably housed: A pilot randomized controlled trial. Pilot Feasibility Stud 8, (83), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-022-01043-x
Ansloos, J. P., Caranto-Morfort, A., Dunn, N. S., DuPré, L, & Kucheran, R. (2022). Beading Native Twitter: Indigenous arts-based approaches to healing and resurgence. Journal of Arts and Psychotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2022.101914
Ansloos, J. P., Wager, A. C., & Dunn, N. S. (2021). Preventing Indigenous youth homelessness in Canada: A qualitative study on structural challenges and upstream prevention in education. Journal of Community Psychology, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22691
Ansloos, J., Dunn, N. S., McCormick, S., Ward, K. (2020). Indigeneity and coloniality as analytic tools. In Kassan, A., & Moodley, R. (Eds), Diversity & Social Justice in Counseling Psychology & Psychotherapy: A Case Study Approach. Cognella Academic Publishing: California.
MacKie, C., Dunn, N., MacLean, S., Testa, V., Heisel, M., & Hatcher, S. (2017). A qualitative study of a blended therapy using problem solving therapy with a customised smartphone app in men who present to hospital with intentional self-harm. BMJ Evidence-Based Mental Health, 20, 118-122. doi: 10.1136/eb-2017-102764