Dr. Paragg is a qualitative researcher specializing in race, racialization, identity, multiculturalism, and immigration and social inequality in the Canadian context. In her research-based position at the University of Alberta, she works in the area of health equity and Indigenous-engaged health research in partnership with First Nations communities, drawing on institutional ethnography approaches.

Her dissertation project focused on the life stories of 21 adults of mixed race aged 37-59 in three Canadian urban contexts, whose life course span the era of official multiculturalism in Canada. The life stories illuminated categories of belonging and shifting racial discourses in the Canadian context, enabling an understanding of the relationship between structural forces and identity.

With On the Move, Dr. Paragg worked on a number of projects including a Community Based Research (CBR) project with the New Alberta Worker’s Project in partnership with the Alberta Worker’s Health Centre, and a CBR project that analyzed Métis Oral histories.

Selected publications:

Paragg, Jillian. 2018. “Life Story Interviewing and Mixed Race Identity Research”.  SAGE Research Methods Cases in Sociology.

Paragg, Jillian. 2017. “‘What are You?’: Mixed Race Responses to the Gaze”. Ethnicities 17.3: 277-298.

Paragg, Jillian. 2016 (Reprint). “’Canadian-First’: Canadian Belonging for Mixed Race People”. Rethinking Society in the 21st Century: Critical Readings in Sociology. 4th ed. Chapter 34. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

Paragg, Jillian. 2015. “’Canadian-First’: Canadian Belonging for Mixed Race People”. Canadian Ethnic Studies 47.2: 21-44.

Paragg, Jillian. 2014. “Studying ‘Mixed Race’: Reflections on Methodological Practice”. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 13: 347-361.

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