Hilde Zitzelsberger
PhD

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