Melissa Park

As an interdisciplinary scholar (art history, occupational science/therapy, medical/psychological anthropology), my research focuses on understanding the ways in which people connect to others and the places they inhabit, particularly in the contexts of psychosocial health and rehabilitation. At McGill University’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, I lead participatory projects with persons with living neurodiverse experience (e.g., severe mental illness, dementia), their families and the health/social service professionals who work with them. Funded by CIHR, SSHRC and PHAC, I engage arts/cultural institutions and local communities to co-develop projects focused on redressing their key concerns.

My clinical and community-based research aims at sustainable health and cultural participation: how can we cultivate environments in which neurodiversity can flourish, with an emphasis on sensory processing and recovery, including the ongoing creation of “sensory-friendly zones” for autistic persons, and care networks for persons receiving psychiatric care, and those living with dementia and their carers. Our collective reflections on the senses, socio-spatial environments, and policy shape interventions that bridge clinical practice and social determinants of health in their communities. I also mobilize interdisciplinary teams to innovate methodologies that can effectively evaluate multi-sited initiatives in and on the terms of those with whom we work. For example, with Dr. Florian Grond, we are refining an immersive sound ethnography to bring his spatial-sonic boundary objects into conversation with the narrative and critical phenomenological and aesthetic frameworks I have developed.

Within the AIRS network, I hope to contribute to linking care and prevention to the experiential dimensions of the environment and its atmospheres, ensuring that health research is both epistemically just and responsive to the deeply social and sensory fabric of everyday life.