Doctoral candidate Jay Cavanagh recognized as a 2025 Killam Scholar

Jay Cavanagh, a third-year PhD candidate in the UCalgary Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, has been named a 2025 Killam Scholar for research that interrogates how clinical decision-making is shaped by knowledge, institutional culture and power. Working in the Department of Sociology under the supervision of Dr. Ariel Ducey, Jay examines how clinicians come to judgments about care and how those processes affect people living with mental health conditions.

“As a scholar with lived experience of mental health challenges, this greatly interested me on both a personal and intellectual level,” Jay explains. That perspective informs both his research questions and his methodology. Building on archival work conducted in 2024, he is preparing for fieldwork at a psychiatric rehabilitation clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he will conduct observations and interviews to explore alternative approaches to care emerging from the Global South.

Receiving the Killam Award was, in his words, “a validating moment both for me and for the community more broadly, that things are changing.” His long-term goal is to reshape how mental health conditions are understood and to contribute to systems that prioritize dignity and humanisation.

Discover our 2025 Killam Scholars and their research here.