Dr. Kimberly A. Williams, PhD, associate professor and program coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies in the Department of Humanities at MRU, is an award-winning author, feminist scholar, community activist and passionate public speaker. Williams teaches introductory and advanced courses in queer, trans, and sexuality studies, transnational feminisms, global gender issues, critical masculinity studies, and Indigenous and decolonial feminisms.

Spanning 16 years, Williams’ academic career is characterized by sustained efforts to extend her scholarly contributions to diverse audiences. She prioritizes publishing works and disseminating information through mediums that are openly accessible to students, practitioners, policymakers and the general public. 

“I am committed to mobilizing the freedom and (increasingly rare) privilege of tenure in the service of social justice off campus, beyond my classrooms, in and for the community in which I live and work,” she says. “It is imperative that my research advance public knowledge and help maintain a vibrant cultural awareness of issues affecting women and other gender and sexual minorities.”

Starting in summer 2017, Williams’ historical walking tour, Booze, Broads & Brothels, explores the people, places and politics of Calgary’s early consensual adult sex industry. Williams offers the tour by donation with all proceeds going to Shift Calgary, the city’s only rights-based provider of harm reducation services to adult sex workers. Williams is currently working on turning the tour into a free, self-guided GPS application and permanent digital public history archive with open access. 

In her most recent book, Stampede: Misogyny, White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism (2021), Williams examines the colonial roots of the Calgary Stampede. Covering complex topics and exposing the often negative consequences behind this annual event, Stampede was among the top selling non-fiction works in Alberta in July 2021.

For her project on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, Managing Pets During Disasters (2018), which examines the emergency and disaster management protocols around family pets left behind during the mandatory evacuation, Williams says reaching practitioners and policymakers was the primary goal. The project was funded by a grant from MRU’s Centre for Community Disaster Research, of which Williams is also a faculty affiliate, and provided concrete policy recommendations for municipal and provincial government officials, first responders, policymakers and animal welfare organizations. The full report is currently featured on the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction website.

With a career in academia spanning over two decades, Dr. Mohamed El Hussein, NP, PhD, professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at MRU, is a significant contributor to the profession of nursing and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

El Hussein’s research focuses on understanding how students learn and creating strategies to support learning of complex concepts. Care of older adults is another pillar of El Hussien’s program of research where he explores barriers and facilitators to recognizing delirium and dementia in acute care settings. To support clinical education, El Hussein created and validated tools to better evaluate students’ performance in practical courses. In addition to generating relevant knowledge, his scholarship yielded several knowledge translation vehicles to simplify the interpretation and application of clinical practice guidelines.

El Hussein’s scholarly output has had a powerful impact on nursing education at a local, national and global level. He has been credited with more than 50 published peer-reviewed articles, co-authored and edited three major nursing textbooks, developed exam banks to meet the National Council Licensure Examination’s new testing guidelines and received over $400,000 in research and scholarship funding. Of note is a recent $218,026 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in collaboration with the University of Toronto for El Hussein’s research, “What are the experiences and needs of informal caregivers of fracture patients in a rehabilitation setting?” 

Further recognition for El Hussein’s work includes one of his articles being selected for the Best of 2020 Collection for The Nurse Practitioner and another receiving an honorable mention as the best research brief published in 2018 in Nursing Education Perspective. 

In the classroom, El Hussein translates his breadth and depth of expert knowledge into innovative teaching approaches, encouraging and supporting students to think critically, deconstruct complex ideas and confidently navigate clinical scenarios. In 2020 he was the recipient of both MRU’s Distinguished Faculty Award and the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University’s (SAMRU) Teaching Excellence Award. 

In addition to his role at Mount Royal, El Hussein is also a board member and the director of education for the Nurse Practitioner Association of Alberta, an adjunct associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary and an acute care nurse practitioner at Rockyview General Hospital. He further plays a large role in disseminating scholarly work by others, serving as an associate editor for two high-impact, peer-reviewed journals and a reviewer for an additional four journals. 

Dr. Michael Asmussen, PhD, assistant professor of biology in MRU’s Faculty of Science and Technology, is a trailblazer of early research success. His research program focuses on how the foot and ankle are essential for humans to walk and run. While seemingly simple movements, the execution of these tasks is complex and requires coordination across the nervous, muscular and skeletal systems. Asmussen’s research seeks to understand the structure, function and neural control during locomotion in healthy, injured and diseased states with the end goal of translating outcomes into innovative healthcare solutions, including biofeedback systems and participant-specific bracing solutions aimed at improving stabilization of the foot and ankle and a person’s ability to safely walk and run.  

Since beginning at Mount Royal in 2019, Asmussen has made many significant contributions to his department’s curriculum, student training and infrastructure support through successful grants. He is the first Canada Research Chair (CRC) in MRU’s Faculty of Science and Technology ($600,000 over five years), and secured the first externally-funded postdoctoral fellow to conduct research at MRU through a Mitacs Elevate Award. 

For his project, “Foot-Ankle Complex: Mechanisms Underpinning its Stability and Control,” Asumssen was awarded $152,000 of funding over five years (2021 – 2026) from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant. He was also awarded a Canada Foundation for Innovation Grant of $799,232 to help put together a human physiology space.

“The large majority will be used to renovate a combined research and teaching space to produce an exceptional training environment for MRU students both in and out of a formal course,” Asmussen explains.

During his time at MRU, Asmussen has published eight articles in peer-reviewed journals and presented his research internationally. In 2021, Asmussen was awarded the World Athletics Award at the International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) for the best paper submitted by a scientist in the field — a competition open to all conference delegates, regardless of career stage. 

A valuable addition to the biology department, Asmussen organizes four to five workshops per semester for research courses and hosts a mini-conference each semester for final presentations. He continues to bring unique industry-oriented research to MRU while advancing a research program with student training at the core.

Dr. Leah Hamilton, PhD, professor in MRU’s Bissett School of Business and cross-appointed to the Department of Psychology, has played a significant role in expanding the institution's capacity to provide mentorship, training and opportunities for undergraduate student researchers to participate in and disseminate scholarship.

As co-designer of MRU’s Bachelor of Business Administration Honours Program and coordinator since its inception in 2015, Hamilton continually contributes to the growth and development of MRU students’ research and scholarship competencies. In addition to the group of honours students she directly supervises every year, Hamilton has played a mentorship role for every student who has gone through the program, helping each to complete their thesis and prepare an oral presentation for Research and Scholarship Days.   

Her guidance includes providing expertise on designing research studies and crafting optimal interview or survey questions, training for advanced qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques, providing feedback on reports and theses, and supporting opportunities to disseminate work and scholarship. 

Hamilton says she prioritizes “soft” research skills such as empathy, deep listening and building community partnerships through trust. “For me, working with undergraduate students isn’t limited to helping them develop their technical research competencies. It involves fostering their personal growth.”

A testament to her support and guidance, Hamilton’s students’ accomplishments include multiple awards, scholarships, presentations to community partners, national conference presentations and publications in peer-reviewed undergraduate research journals.

“I try to show up for my students with compassion and to advocate for them when difficulties arise, whether related to their research projects or in their lives more broadly,” she says.

Starting in 2016, Hamilton has organized and facilitated four workshops at Mount Royal to help develop faculty members’ undergraduate research supervision skills. She also designed and currently delivers the Research Methods for Business (MGMT 5110) course. 

Further, Hamilton’s service at MRU has included being a member of the Research and Scholarship Days Organizing Committee, chair of the Undergraduate Research Working Group and member of the General Faculties Council’s Executive Committee.

Hamilton’s own program of research focuses on the social and economic integration of newcomers and refugees in Canada. Her work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada.