Past Employees
Linda Nuotio-Flynn
Linda Nuotio-Flynn is an alumnus of Memorial University, where she holds undergraduate degrees. She has worked with Memorial University in Western Labrador since 1998. She is an active member of the community and commits much time and talent in the areas of arts, education and economic development. Her personal passions include theatre and music.
Mark David Turner
Mark Turner is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto where he is completing his dissertation on the history of film production on the island of Newfoundland. His research interests are rooted in Newfoundland and Labrador performance practices and their relationship to ethnography, politics, culture and archival practice. He received his B.A. in English from Memorial University of Newfoundland and his M.A. from the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama. Throughout the last fifteen years, Mark has been both a practitioner and educator of a variety of performance arts.
Derek Wilton
Professor Derek H.C. Wilton, Ph.D., P.Geo. has been a faculty member in the Department of Earth Sciences since 1983. He is a St. John’s native and received his B.Sc. from MUN, his M.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, and his Ph.D from MUN. He has been conducting research since 1984 in Labrador from Cape Chidley to southern Labrador. He has sailed the northern Labrador coast, north of Nain, five times, up to circum-navigating Killiniq Island (once); his most recent expedition was the subject of a Nature of Things episode of the Geologic Journey series. He has been involved with research groups/companies/ government surveys that have documented a wide variety of geological occurrences throughout Labrador, including geochemistry on archeological specimens of Ramah chert. In November-December, 2006, he spent six weeks visiting nineteen Labrador communities with high schools; he talked to the students about the geology of Labrador and careers in the mineral industry and at night held public meetings to discuss research. He received the Education Award from the Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland and Labrador for outstanding contributions to Geoscience Education in 2004 and was awarded the W.H.Gross Medal by the Mineral Deposits Division of the Geological Association of Canada in 1991.
Jon Beale
Jon Beale was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. He graduated from Queen's University with a BAH in Economics, and completed an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics in England.
Jon's interests are in community development and creating lasting partnerships between communities and other stakeholders. Before coming to Labrador, Jon worked in Zambia in Sub-Saharan Africa, supporting farmer groups to start their own businesses.
Since joining the team at the LI, Jon has been involved in community field research on both the North and South Coasts, coordination and oversight of multiple stakeholder meetings, as well as the management of the "Labrador/ians on Film" screening series.
Jon loves to hike and camp and loves the Big Land for all the opportunity there is to be outdoors.
Dr. Johanna Wolf
Dr. Johanna Wolf joined the Labrador Institute in 2010 as the first postdoctoral fellow in Labrador. She is also the Senior Science Coordinator of the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research examines the individual, social, cultural and institutional dimensions of responding climate change. Previously, Johanna was a Senior Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. She holds a BSc in environmental science (Royal Roads University, Canada) and an MSc and PhD in international development (University of East Anglia, UK). Johanna has worked as a consultant for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (Canada), the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (Canada), SciDev.Net (UK), ActionAid Int'l., and the UN Climate Change Secretariat (Germany).
Johanna enjoys playing various muscial instruments, cooking Thai and Indian dishes and baking sourdough bread. She can often be found at the pool swimming lanes or pedaling her bike through town.
Jennifer Butler Wight
Jennifer was born in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, and graduated from Pasadena Academy in 2001.
Jennifer is a Memorial graduate having completed her B.A. in Social/Cultural Studies at Grenfell Campus in 2005. She received her M.A. from the University of Windsor in 2007. One month after defending her Master's thesis, Jennifer moved to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Jennifer joined the LI's team in April 2009. Since then, she has taken on various roles in preparing funding grants, copy-editing, webpage maintenance, and she also taught Sociology in MUN's on-site BSw program.
Prior to joining the LI team, Jennifer was the Research Manager with NunatuKavut. She enjoys the outdoors, but also likes cooking and quilting.
Ilana Alice
Ilana Allice worked as a research assistant for Dr. Trevor Bell, a professor in MUN's geography department. Ilana has a BSc from Queen's in Environmental and Life Sciences and an MA in Development Studies from Queen's.
Lori McNeill
Lori has worked as a Clinical Psychologist, provisionally registered in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. She was born and raised in Labrador, and enjoys spending time with her family and engaging in outdoor activities such as camping, snowmobiling, and traveling.
She obtained a B.A. from University of New Brunswick, specializing in Psychology and Sociology, a M.A. in Human Development, specializing in Psychology, Sociology, and Kinesiology, and during her time with the LI, was completing a dissertation as a final requirement for a Ph.D. in School and Child Clinical Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto.
Lori wishes to take on a scientist-practitioner mode of practice; utilizing her clinical skills in research endeavours. Her research interests focus on mental health determinants of rural Aboriginal people, including, availability and suitability of mental health services, education, family dynamics, protective and risk factors, and the reliability of standardized psychological assessment tools and mental health diagnoses with Aboriginal people.
Her Master's level research explored determinants of rural Labrador adolescents' willingness to relocate for further education beyond high school. Her Doctorate level research is an exploratory study of Labrador Inuit parent's involvement in their children's schooling; specifically, can predictive variables presented in the literature be used to study parent involvement in Inuit families
Rachel Hirsch
During her time with the LI, Rachel Hirsch was an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and a Labrador Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her postgraduate work was conducted at the University of Western Ontario and she had recently completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at York University. Rachel's postdoctoral work expanded on her doctoral research by exploring how everyday decision-making about environmental health information, across scales from communities through to the federal government in Canada, can inform government initiatives to promote healthy communities and cities. Rachel has also been actively involved as principal investigator in the development and implementation of a technique called knowledge tracking meant to assess the use and exchange of a local message from Iqaluit, Nunavut about climate change and health by municipal, territorial, and federal policy actors. Rachel maintains connections with York University as an Executive Member of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability and as co-chair of the Climate Consortium for Research Action Integration working group on interdisciplinary collaboration.
Rachel resided in Nain from January-December 2012 where she worked on issues of knowledge mobilization and environmental health program evaluation. She was a partner on an innovative project, the first of its kind in Canada, focused on working together with community members, the Nain Inuit Community Government (NICG) and the Nunatsiavut Government (NG) to expand Nain's community freezer program to include a youth outreach component focused on intergenerational skills, knowledge, and values exchange and to evaluate the success of this environmental health intervention by drawing on techniques in participatory program evaluation.
