Peri Ballantyne Professor, Sociology
B.A., M.A. (University of Western Ontario), Ph.D. (Toronto)
Classes I teach at Trent:
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SOCI2151H – Sociology Research Methods
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SOCI3151H – Practicing Social Research
I also seek out students in the 3rd or 4th years to complete research practicum or thesis projects – sometimes based on projects emerging from my own community involvement or based on projects of particular interest to students. I am open to discussing your individual and/or small group project ideas, so contact me if you might be interested – periballantyne@trentu.ca
My research interests include:
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sociology of health and the ‘social determinants of health’
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poverty, food security, work and employment
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medicines access/use/outcomes;
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qualitative methods, including grounded theory, ethnography, institutional ethnography
How does your research translate into your teaching, both through courses and supervision?
My research overlaps with the above courses, and with practicum and thesis projects I’ve supervised (or will supervise in the future). I like to help students examine and compare the contribution of different methodologies to understanding particular sociological and health related topics, and this is the basis of the research methods courses I teach.
My current or recent projects
Understanding Trajectories of Adaptation to Disability Onset Following Workplace Injury
I am currently organizing survey data from a 10-year follow up of a sample of Ontario workers (claimants of the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) who sustained disabilities resulting from a workplace injury. Initially interviewed in 2008-09, after an average of 52 months after a workplace injury occurrence, a group of 126 of the original sample of 494 workers were re-interviewed in 2019 – to provide my team with insights into the longer-term impacts of disability onset - as related to employment and income security, health, and social integration or isolation. This project was funded by an (internal) SSHRC Explore grant and Research Capacity Enhancement Fund from the Trent Centre on Aging and Society. I am International Advisor on a similar, but larger scale project being undertaken in New Zealand, following 10+ trajectories of claimants of that country’s national Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC): Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study 10 Years On: POIS-10 (Professor Sarah Derrett, Principal Investigator, funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand).
Evolving role of professional pharmacists in pharmaceutical public health
I have a long interest in the Pharmacy profession, and in future research, I aim to document the changing roles of community and hospital pharmacists in this evolving health profession. This work is in recognition of the expanding role of pharmaceuticals in health care, and of the expertise pharmacists bring to understanding and guiding the public around their safe and appropriate use. This project will involve, in part, the critical analysis of emerging research on ‘deprescribing’ that involves pharmacy and medical researchers’ systematic examination of the appropriateness of medicine regimes in ‘captive’ populations such as long-term care residents, and of the impact of modified medicine regimes’ on users’ health.
Five publications that exemplify my work:
Ballantyne, Peri J., Ryan, K., and Bissell, P. (2021). The (developing) pharmaceutical solutions to COVID-19. Navigating global tensions around the distribution of therapeutics and vaccines. Chapter 13 in Living Pharmaceutical Lives, Peri J. Ballantyne and Kath Ryan, Eds., Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Ballantyne, Peri J. (2021). Drugs at work: implicated in the making of the neoliberal worker. Chapter 2 in Living Pharmaceutical Lives, Peri J. Ballantyne and Kath Ryan, Eds., Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Ballantyne, P.J., Norris, P., Parachuru, V.P., Thomson, M. (2018). Becoming a ‘Pharmaceutical Person’: Medicine use trajectories from age 26 to 38 in a representative birth cohort from Dunedin, New Zealand. SSM: Population Health 4: 37-44.
Casey, R., Ballantyne, P.J. (2017). Level of diagnosed chronic health conditions in an injured worker sample compared to the general population. J Occupational and Environmental Medicine 59(5): 486-496.
Ballantyne, P.J., Casey, R., O’Hagan, F., and Vienneau, P. (2016) Poverty Status of Worker Compensation Claimants with Permanent Impairments. Critical Public Health 26(2): 173-190.
What achievements and/or contributions in research are you most proud of?
I am particularly pleased with the forthcoming edited collection completed with my colleague and co-editor Professor Kath Ryan, “Living Pharmaceutical Lives” (forthcoming 2021 May, Routledge). This collection includes 12 substantive chapters that illustrate the varied impacts of drugs in human lives – positive and negative; the ‘work’ of negotiating medicines in a variety of contexts and health conditions; and the social and political context in which medicine-taking is contextualized and made problematic.
I am also so pleased to coordinate our health studies specialization in the Department of Sociology at Trent – and I hope to continue to attract Sociology majors and minors, and other interested students, to consider this specialization in their undergraduate studies.
Accepting new UG and Graduate student supervisions: If you are interested in the topics discussed above, or in related topics, please contact Professor Ballantyne to discuss your interest in being supervised for an undergraduate half- or full-course research practicum or 4th year thesis project. I am also available to discuss graduate programs – including options for graduate studies at Trent, and/or for other Canadian graduate programs in the general area of health studies.