Alison Gerlach
University of Victoria

Conference presenters shared with the Center on KTDRR these biographical statements. The bios represent their choices about how to describe their expertise.

Dr. Alison Gerlach is an associate professor in the School of Child & Youth Care at the University of Victoria in western Canada, which is located on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ peoples, whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. Dr. Gerlach’s program of critically informed research and scholarship aims to inform how the governance, organization, and delivery of community-based early years and child disability programs and services can be inclusive of and responsive to families whose lived experiences include marginalization, racialization, and discrimination. Dr. Gerlach is particularly interested in the continuities between children’s early experiences of adversity, dis/ability, and health inequities and the development of inclusive, responsive, and equity-oriented structural, organizational, and practice-level approaches. Her work draws on 25 years of providing occupational therapy with children in diverse community and family contexts, including in partnership with Indigenous organizations and First Nations in British Columbia. Dr. Gerlach is committed to community-engaged, participatory research that engages with communities, organizations, families, and children as research partners.

Conference Presentation: Complicating 'Choice' in the Early Child Development and Intervention Sector in BC