LONG BIO (ACADEMIC)

Andrea Charise is a scholar, research leader, and interdisciplinary educator working at the intersections of health, humanities, aging, and community-engaged scholarship. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) and currently serves as Acting Associate Vice-Principal Research and Innovation (Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships), where she leads institution-wide strategies for research growth, partnership development, and interdisciplinary impact.

Charise brings over two decades of experience as a health researcher, with a foundational background in geriatrics and the care of older adults. Her award-winning research bridges literary and medical humanities, and her work has been supported by over $2.5 million in external funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF), and the Canada Council for the Arts. She has published in top-tier journals such as Academic Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, Advances in Health Sciences Education, and ELH: English Literary History.

Charise is the author or editor of two field-defining books: The Aesthetics of Senescence (a finalist for the British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize) and The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. She is also the recipient of numerous awards for scholarship and public engagement, including the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, the University of Toronto’s Early Career Teaching Award, and UTSC’s Research Recognition Award.

A leading voice in the advancement of health humanities in Canada, Charise is the founding supervisor of the nation’s first undergraduate program in Health Humanities (scopelab.ca). She is Principal Investigator of FLOURISH: Community-Engaged Arts for Social Wellness (flourishcollective.ca), a SSHRC and NFRF-funded initiative promoting creative engagement across the life course, and curator of The Resemblage Project (resemblageproject.ca), a multi-award-winning, SSHRC-funded digital storytelling initiative recognized internationally for its innovative approach to aging, art, and intergenerational dialogue.

Charise earned her BASc (Hons.) from McMaster University, an MA in Theory and Criticism from Western University, and a PhD in English from the University of Toronto, where she also completed the Collaborative Program in Health, Technology, and Place. She held a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa.

In addition to her academic career, Charise is a practicing ceramics artist and certified end-of-life doula, reflecting a deep commitment to arts-based care and lifelong creative inquiry (www.squaredcircleceramics.ca).