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Ontario Tech acknowledges the lands and people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

Learn more about Indigenous Education and Cultural Services

Hilde Zitzelsberger
PhD

Associate Professor

Faculty of Health Sciences

Contact information

Shawenjigewining Hall - Room SHA 435
North Oshawa
2000 Simcoe Street North
Oshawa, ON L1G 0C5

905.721.8668 ext. 3811

hilde.zitzelsberger@ontariotechu.ca

Research topics

  • disabilities and differences
  • chronic illnesses
  • embodiment
  • community health
  • gender and health (i.e. women and girls)
  • health-care technologies

Research and expertise

  • Background and interests

    Dr. Hilde Zitzelsberger graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in 1998. In 2002, she completed her Master of Science in the Department of Public Health Sciences, Social Science and Health Program. This degree was concurrent with the Collaborative Graduate Program in Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto, where her focus was on exploring social attitudes and responses to disability and women’s experiences of living with disability and/or physical difference. 

    Dr. Zitzelsberger's PhD degree was completed in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, concurrent with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Collaborative PhD Research and Training Program in Health Care, Technology and Place at the University of Toronto. Her research centred on girls’ and boys’ technologically mediated experiences of hospital-based hemodialysis using ethnographic methods, including participant observation and participatory research approaches. Dr. Zitzelsberger has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Canadian Institute of Health Research/Ontario Women’s Council Health Professional Fellowship.

    Strongly dedicated to community health issues for more than 12 years, she has worked in various health and social sectors in the areas of violence, women’s health, disability and difference, and body image. She has also worked with a diversity of communities across race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities.

  • Publications

    For a comprehensive list of publications, please visit PubMed.

    • Zitzelsberger, H (2010). Sylvie: A Reflection on Embodiments, Technologies, and Transformations Through a Fictional Account of Conjoinment. Radical Psychology: A Journal of Psychology, Politics and Radicalism, (Special issue on Gender and Bodily Difference) online journal;
    • Rice, C, Zitzelsberger, H, Porch, W and Ignagni, E (2010). Creating Community Across Disability and Difference in D. Driedger (Ed.), Living the Edges: A Disabled Women's Reader. Toronto, Ontario: Inanna Publications and Education Inc. (reprint);
    • Gibson, BE, Zitzelsberger, H and McKeever, P (2009). “Futureless” Persons: Shifting Life Expectancies and the Vicissitudes of Progressive Illness. Sociology of Health and Illness, 31(4), 554-568;
    • Rice, C, Zitzelsberger, H, Porch, W and Ignagni, E (2009). Creating Community across Disability and Difference in T. Titchkosky & R. Michalko (Eds), Rethinking Normalcy: A Disability Studies Reader. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc (reprint);
    • Zitzelsberger, H (2008). (In)visibility: Accounts of Embodiment of Women with Physical Disabilities and Differences (Part 12) in C. Malacrida & J. Low (Eds),Sociology of the Body: A Reader. Toronto, Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada
  • Research collaborators
    • The Hospital for Sick Children
  • Education
    • Bachelor of Science in Nursing, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario 
    • Master of Science, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario 
    • PhD, University of Toronto