The Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research (CQ) is pleased to invite you to join us on February 6, 2026 for a CQ Public Seminar with Dr. Bernice Yanful, marking the launch of our 2026 Seminar Series, Research Justice as Praxis: Critical Qualitative Health Methodologies.
This hybrid event welcomes participants to join in person or online. Light refreshments will be served for those attending in person.
Event Details
Seminar Speaker: Dr. Bernice Yanful
Title: Cultivating Food Sovereignty Through School Food? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ghana’s School Feeding Programme
Date and Time: February 6, 2026 | 12pm to 1.30pm (EST)
Venue: (In-person) Room 681, 6th floor,155 College Street, Health Sciences Building; (Online) Zoom
Register here. If you are attending in person, please select the “in-person” ticket option. If you are attending online, please select the “online” ticket option.
Seminar Description
In this seminar, Dr. Yanful will reflect on her critical discourse analysis of the Ghana School Feeding Programme, a national school lunch initiative feeding millions of children daily. Drawing on her doctoral research, she examines the theoretical and methodological assumptions shaping her study, the role of positionality in the research process, and the use of methods such as poetic transcription, interviews, and documentary analysis. She also reflects on the representational politics of justice-oriented qualitative research and the importance of working with local collaborators.
Grounded in a commitment to research justice, this talk invites reflection on whose knowledges guide research practice and how justice-oriented methodologies might contribute to more sustainable and equitable food-system futures.
Dr. Yanful received an Honourable Mention for the 2024–25 Joan Eakin Award for Methodological Excellence in a Qualitative Doctoral Dissertation for her thesis, Cultivating Food Sovereignty Through School Food? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ghana’s School Feeding Programme.
About the speaker:
Bernice Yanful, RN, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research examines approaches for advancing food justice and food sovereignty.
2026 CQ Seminar Series on Research Justice as Praxis
CQ’s 2026 seminar series explores how qualitative inquiry can function as a site of justice-oriented praxis. Across disciplines, researchers, students, practitioners, and community partners are grappling with questions of power, representation, ethics, and meaning-making in health research. The series invites reflection on how critical qualitative methodologies—shaped by Indigenous, feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, queer, Afrocentric, and disability justice traditions—can challenge inequities and foster more relational, accountable, and transformative approaches to knowledge production.
Through talks, panels, and dialogues, the series examines how research design, data generation, analysis, and representation can advance equity, dignity, and social change. The series is open to all who are interested in deepening their methodological practice and engaging diverse ways of knowing in the pursuit of health and social justice.
Learn more about the 2026 CQ Seminar Series here.
