Katelin Albert
Assistant Professor
Sociology
- Contact:
- Office: COR A371 katelinalbert@uvic.ca 250-721-8600
- Credentials:
- PhD (University of Toronto)
- Area of expertise:
- Health and medicine, vaccines, health technology, science and technology studies, genders and sexualities, sexual health, social theory and feminist theory, sociology of knowledge
- Related links:
Dr. Katelin Albert is a medical sociologist working in the area of health and gender whose research explores how people navigate healthcare systems and make health-related decisions within the constraints of broader social, structural, and political forces. She specializes in understanding sexual and reproductive health experiences, with particular attention to how inequalities shape access to care, health knowledge, and personal decision-making.
She has several ongoing and complimentary programs of research. One stream of her research focuses on the concept and experience of waiting in healthcare, especially in the context of sexual and reproductive health. In another line of inquiry, she is co-developing research that interrogates contemporary cultures of health and wellness expertise (from medical professionals and public health messaging to influencers and biohackers). This work builds on feminist and critical traditions that examine the politics of expert knowledge and competing expert narratives in health discourses.
Much of her previous and ongoing work has been on vaccination politics, health decision making, and gendered health technologies. She has published on topics including differing views of maternal responsibility in health decision making for children in relation to the HPV vaccine, adolescent decision-making about the HPV vaccine, sex education, health information-seeking during the COVID-19 pandemic, and students’ experiences of campus-based sexual harassment. Her work appears in journals such as Sociology of Health & Illness, The Canadian Review of Sociology, The American Sociologist, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, and Canadian Journal of Sociology, Violence Against Women, and SAGE Open.
In addition to her empirical research, Dr. Albert maintains an active interest in social theory, feminist epistemology, STS and the politics of knowledge production. Her theoretical work addresses questions of “undone science,” the gendered and exclusionary history of sociology, and inequalities in academic knowledge production.
At UVic, Dr. Albert is a research affiliate at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health and an active member of the Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights Research Cluster and the Digital Health Equity Group. She has received support for her research from CIHR, SSHRC, Genome BC, BCCDC, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and multiple internal UVic funds.
A dedicated teacher and mentor, Dr. Albert prioritizes inclusive and engaged pedagogy. She supports student development through collaborative writing, professional development workshops, and ongoing mentorship. While she is not actively recruiting new graduate students at this time, she welcomes inquiries from prospective students interested in her areas of research.
Interests
- medical sociology
- sociology of health and mental health
- sexual health and sexual experiences
- qualitative methods
- social theory
- science and technology
Publications
Albert, Katelin, & Garry Gray. 2025. “Vaccination in a Post-Truth Era: The Role of Self-Rated Health, (Mis)Trust, and Intuition.” Sage Open, 15(3).
Albert, Katelin, Amanda Couture-Carron, and Erik Schneiderhan. 2024. “Non-physical and ambient sexual harassment of women undergraduate university students in Canada: A Diary Study.” Violence Against Women, 30(9), 2345-2370.
Albert, Katelin, & Garry Gray. 2023. Keeping up with COVID‐19 information: Capacity issues and knowledge uncertainty early in the pandemic. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 60(4), 594-615.
Albert, Katelin. (2022). "'All I do is present what is given to us as the facts': progressive sex education and the reproduction of inequality in public school classrooms." The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.
Albert, Katelin, Jonah Stuart Brundage, Paige Sweet and Frédéric Vandenberghe. (2020) "Toward a critical realist epistemology?" Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 50(3):357-372.
Albert, Katelin. (2019) "Beyond the responsiblity binary: analysing maternal responsiblity in the HPV vaccination decision." Sociology of Health and Illness. 41(6):1088-103.
Albert, Katelin. (2015) "Towards a new normal: emergent elites and feminist scholarship." The American Sociologist, 46:29-39.
Albert, Katelin. (2014) "Erasing the social from social science: the intellectual costs of boundary-work and the Canadian Institute of Health Research." Canadian Journal of Sociology, 39(3):393-420.
Albert, Katelin. (2012) "Documenting our future history: contemporarily making social science." Timelines, 20, ASA History of Sociology Section's newsletter.
Albert, Katelin. (2012) "On bringing theory to life: theorizing and the history of sociology." Interview with Dr. Richard Swedberg (Cornell University), Timelines, 19, ASA History of Sociology Section's newletter.
Albert, Katelin. (2012) "On privilege and exception." Interview with Dr. Shamus Khan (Columbia University), Timelines, 19, ASA History of Sociology Section's newsletter.
Derksen, Linda, Katelin Bowes (Albert), Jerry Hinbest and Pamela Shaw. (2009) Gabriola Transportation Alternatives Survey: Final Report. Survey undertaken for the Gabriola Ferry Advisory Commitee.
Bowes (Albert), Katelin, Jill Fikowski and Melanie O'Neill. (2007) "Critical incident stress debriefing: concepts and controversy." Visions 3(3) 6.