Assistant Professor
Accepting MA and PhD students for the 2027-2028 academic year.
Scarfe Library Block 281
Dr. Nicole Santos Dunn is a Psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Counselling Psychology program. She earned her PhD at the University of Toronto and completed her CPA‑accredited residency at the University of British Columbia. Her research is interdisciplinary and rooted in suicide prevention and life promotion. Nicole is a white settler of Portuguese and Irish ancestry who grew up on the Williams Treaties in Whitby, Ontario. She is an uninvited guest and grateful visitor on beautiful xʷməθkʷəy̓əm land.
Scholarly Interests:
Dr. Dunn’s research examines the social, political, affective, and environmental conditions that shape health and wellness, with a particular focus on suicide. Grounded in this work is a strong interest in community‑driven practices of everyday care and resistance to structural violence. Across her research, she has explored a range of contexts, including housing injustice, Indigenous health policy, evidence based mental health care, gender‑based violence, and harm reduction.
Dr. Dunn is committed to research that advances community‑identified priorities and approaches that privilege participant voice through critical qualitative inquiry and mixed‑methods research. Guided by anti‑colonial, queer, and feminist methodologies, her work is oriented toward justice‑doing. Across all of her research, she prioritizes ethics and a deep respect for lived and living experience.
Theoretical Orientation:
Process-Experiential
Compassion-Focussed
Anti-Oppressive
Accepting MA and PhD students for the 2027-2028 academic year.
Public Health Agency of Canada
Private Practice
CNPS 524 Counselling Adults
CNPS 588 Supervised Clinical Experience in Counselling
Some of Nicole’s current projects include:
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant, Co-I Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos, (2026-2028) : Sensing Suicide and Survival in Vancouver: The Gendered Experience of Hidden Homelessness and Survival
- SSHRC Explore Grant (2026 – 2027) Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) and homelessness in Canada: A scoping review
- SSHRC Doctoral Grant (2020-2024) Engagements with life: Restorying suicide with young women and femmes facing housing injustice. www.engagementswithlife.ca
- Theorizing crisis and anti-oppressive practices/principles in suicide risk assessment and safety planning in mental health provider training
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
McCormick, S., Dunn, N. S., Ansloos, J. P., & Ward, K. (2026, in press). Indigeneity and Coloniality and Their Impact in Psychology. In Kassan, A., & Moodley, R. (2nd Eds), Diversity & Social Justice in Counseling Psychology & Psychotherapy: A Case Study Approach. Cognella Academic Publishing: California.
Dunn, N. S. & Ansloos, J. P. (2026). Sensing and spatializing survival: Affective geographies of gendered housing injustice and suicide in Toronto. Wellbeing, Space, and Society. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2026.100352
Dunn, N. S. & Ansloos, J. P. (2025). Living through the chaos: Rethinking ecological dimensions of suicide with young women and femmes facing housing injustice. Atlantis, Vol, 46.3, 46-64. https://atlantisjournal.ca/index.php/atlantis/en/article/view/5817/4884
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
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. Evidence-based mental health, 20(4), 118-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/eb-2017-102764