Christina Klassen
Student Researcher
- M.Sc. in Psychiatry (McGill)
Christina recently completed her Master’s degree at McGill University in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry (2020). Her research, under the supervision of Dr. Mónica Ruiz-Casares and Dr. Cécile Rousseau, investigates how the migration and resettlement experiences of Syrian refugee mothers influence their wellbeing, parenting practices, and family relationships. She is passionate about conducting research that privileges participants’ voices and informs clinical practice and policymaking. Christina welcomes opportunities to collaborate on projects related to refugees, asylum seekers, and others impacted by migration, as well as on research that considers cultural and community perspectives in individuals’ experiences and perceptions of mental health and illness and in clinical practice.
She was drawn to the Youth Engagement placement in Lebanon with LERRN because of her previous work in the Middle East on refugee issues, including a youth work internship in Beirut in 2016-17, and her more than ten years of volunteer work with adolescents in varied capacities. Christina is passionate about engaging young people in meaningful ways in the issues that affect their lives and, when considering the placement, was especially excited by LERRN’s vision of collaborative research that follows the leadership of local stakeholders in refugee and host communities in the global south.
Having recently graduated from her Master’s, Christina is currently working on a research internship at the University of New South Wales looking at the impact of family separation on refugee mental health and will be starting her PhD in Child Clinical Psychology at Simon Fraser University in September 2020.