Born in Brisbane Australia while her father was completing a PhD in Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Queensland, Allie grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, and arrived at UBC in 2005 to enroll in the BA program in English. After completing an honours thesis entitled From –∞ to +∞, a stride at a time: Disrupting spacetime in James Joyce’s Ulysses, she spent a year working with the UBC Ceremonies Office and reflecting on her career options. She realized that, although she very much enjoyed English and had received an honours medal and prize upon graduation, and was getting strong encouragement to pursue an academic career in that discipline, her ideals were drawing her in a different direction – one in which she could envision in-depth human engagement and a direct social impact.
Consulting widely and taking science prerequisites that had not been a component of her English degree, Allie was fortunate to be admitted into the UBC BSN advanced standing program in 2011 and has not looked back. Graduating in 2013, she began her nursing career at St. Paul’s Hospital, working in both mental health inpatient units and in the eating disorders inpatient unit over the next four years. In 2015, she returned to UBC for her MSN program, during which she served as a sessional clinical associate in mental health clinical and practicum courses and became a research assistant. Initially confident that she would end her studies here and return to clinical teaching, she was surprised to discover a love for research! Completing a master’s thesis on Nursing students’ experiences of mental health practicums: A narrative inquiry (co-supervised by Drs. Emily Jenkins and Vicky Bungay), she continued on into the doctoral program in Nursing. Beyond continuing to teach and serving as a Research Site Coordinator for the EQUIP Emergency Project and other research projects at the School, she was fortunate to receive support via a UBC Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (2012-2022) as well as a UBC Killam Doctoral Fellowship (2018-2020) and a competitive Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Graduate Scholarship (2018-2022). After taking a break in 2019-2020 so that she and her spouse Andrea Eadie could give birth to their son Arbor, Allie completed her doctoral program with a dissertation entitled Nurses’ enactment of equity-promoting practices in the emergency department: A discourse analysis (with Vicky Bungay as supervisor, and supervisory committee members Colleen Varcoe and Amélie Blanchet Garneau from the University of Montreal) in June 2022. Having relocated to Victoria, BC during the COVID pandemic to be close to both family and nature, Allie began sessional teaching at the University of Victoria during that final year of her PhD. She also immediately began a Postdoctoral Fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Alison Gerlach in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria, and was delighted to be extended an offer of appointment from the University of Victoria School of Nursing for a tenure track position as Assistant Professor, starting in January 2023.
Allie envisions her career exploring complex questions of how nurses take up social justice in everyday practices, and how we can further leverage our shared professional commitments to promoting equity. She is also thrilled to be in a position to work with nursing students across undergraduate and graduate programs and to pass along the mentorship she received throughout her own journey at UBC.
What she appreciates most about her years at UBC is the mentorship she received from faculty at the School of Nursing, and the steady guidance and support that transcended the dissertation writing process alone. She is also grateful to have connected with many amazing colleagues and peers, and looks forward to a career filled with rich collaborations across the nursing, and health care communities.
