Pia Kontos
Biographic Data
| ID | 153290 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pia Kontos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pia |
| FAMILY NAME | Kontos |
| SIGNATURE | KONTOS P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8893-2544 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 583 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Urban Poverty in the Everyday Lives of Older People
Social conditions and pressures associated with city living cause particular challenges for older people given fixed incomes, life course needs (e.g., living alone, mobility issues, need for care), and reductions to essential public supports. The proposed study explores older people’s everyday experiences of poverty and low income in the urban contexts of Toronto and Montreal, Canada’s two largest cities. In Canada, a country where federal, provi…
Disrupting stigma associated with dementia and dance through documentary film
Dance is a powerful means to reduce stigma associated with dementia by promoting, preserving, and sustaining human flourishing. However, dance is rarely adopted for this purpose in the context of dementia care; as with other art programming, dance is primarily adopted in dementia care to achieve individual therapeutic or functional needs and outcomes rather than to support access to the art form itself and social engagement through co-creativity.…
“I think it made me a better person”
Purpose Immigrant youth face both unique and disproportionate barriers to sexual health. Targeted sexual health education to redress these disparities requires creative and inclusive approaches that consider personal and community challenges and strengths. This study piloted a novel intervention: SExT: Sex Education by Theatre, a theatre-based, culturally-relevant, participatory action research programme delivered in an immigration destination ne…
Translating relational theories into dementia care using research-informed drama
Culture change initiatives in older adult and dementia care have called for a new care paradigm informed by a relational ontology and relational theories. Yet translating these humanizing principles into practice has proven difficult; traditional approaches to knowledge translation have not had a sustained impact. One of the most significant impediments to transforming the culture of care has been the lack of understanding of what it means to be …
Transforming long-term care
Culturally responsive care is essential to meaningful relationship-building in long-term care (LTC) settings, yet there is limited understanding of how Relationship-Centered Care (RCC) is interpreted and enacted in contexts shaped by shared cultural frameworks. This critical ethnographic study examines how RCC practices unfolded within an ethno-specific LTC home serving predominantly Chinese older adults in Vancouver, drawing on document review, …
The living need care”
Bereavement scholarship predominantly examines psychological aspects of grief, which neglects the role of social, economic, and political factors that shape the space to accommodate these experiences. Responding to calls for enhancing bereavement care, this research explores bereavement accommodation for workers in precarious employment in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on critical qualitative research and feminist ethics, this study employed in-depth …
Stigma associated with dementia among recreation and leisure studies students and professionals
Stigma negatively impacts quality of life of people living with dementia and their families and their interactions with others (e.g. community members, health and social care professionals). While recreation and leisure studies professionals play a key role in challenging this stigma by facilitating the engagement of persons living with dementia in meaningful activities in their communities, to date no study has explored stigma associated with de…
How the more life discourse constrains end-of-life conversations in the primary care of medically frail older adults
There is growing emphasis for primary care clinicians to initiate and engage in end-of-life (EOL) conversations with medically frail older adults. However, EOL conversations happen most often when death is imminent or are avoided altogether. The objective of this study was to understand the socio-political forces shaping EOL conversations between clinicians, medically frail older adults and/or their care partners within an urban primary care sett…
Sex Education by Theatre (SExT)
Despite rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and inequitable access to education and services, few studies have addressed the unique sex education needs of newcomer youth in Canada and other increasingly demographically diverse Western countries. This study involved the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel and innovative participatory action research project, SExT: Sex Education by Theatre. SExT is a theatre-based, c…
Critical Characteristics of Housing and Housing Supports for Individuals with Concurrent Traumatic Brain Injury and Mental Health and/or Substance Use Challenges
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and mental health and/or substance use challenges (MHSU) are commonly co-occurring and prevalent in individuals experiencing homelessness; however, evidence suggests that systems of care are siloed and organized around clinical diagnoses. Research is needed to understand how housing and housing supports are provided to this complex and understudied group in the context of siloed service systems. This study aimed to de…
Biomedicalization of end-of-life conversations with medically frail older adults - Malleable and senescent bodies
Disrupting dehumanising and intersecting patterns of modernity with a relational ethic of caring
Background: This article describes two dehumanising patterns associated with modern culture and their consequences of stigma and suffering for persons living with dementia: the increasing division, judgment and exclusion of persons based on difference, disability, and undesirability; and the increasing attention to management and control, and their links with ageism, healthism and consumerism. These patterns have been established in media, polici…
Working at the margins
As artist and social researchers working in health research, we work ‘against the grain’ in marginalised spaces to resist the marketisation of knowledge and related neoliberal practices. Our cross-disciplinary alliance, between theatre / performance studies and critical health science, is premised on engaging the humanities, arts, and social sciences to resist the subversion of both critical qualitative research and arts-based inquiries, and to i…
A critical realist exploration of the vulnerability of staff to sexual harassment in residential long-term care
Raising the curtain on stigma associated with dementia
Persons living with dementia and their carers experience stigma. Stigma intensifies social exclusion and threatens health and well-being. Decreasing stigma associated with dementia is a public health priority across national and international settings and is a key component of National Dementia Strategies. Research-based drama is an effective public health strategy for reducing stigma and enhancing well-being. In this article we focus on survey d…
Rethinking musicality in dementia as embodied and relational
An Aesthetic of Relationality
Research-informed theater is often informed by an assumed linear trajectory between research findings and performance, overlooking the multiple embodied perspectives that are implicated in the development of research-informed theater. To challenge this assumption, we explore how artist-researchers draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand the research findings, how they conceptualize the intended audience, and how those u…
Re-conceptualizing ‘impact’ in art-based health research
This article explores the notion of ‘impact’ in art-based health research (ABHR), and how we might re-conceptualize it through the kind of work ABHR ‘does’ in generating and disseminating knowledge. We explore ‘impact’ from a critical qualitative perspective, leveraging findings from a study based on interviews with ABHR researchers/artists/trainees. We focus on their reflections related to ‘impact’, and informed by our own experiences of produci…
A qualitative exploration of work-related head injury
Our findings suggest that, beyond the need to redress the inattention to hazards in the physical environment, there is a need to address norms that influence worker decision-making to improve the safety of workers. Using Labour Process Theory highlights an important social dynamic within workplace sectors that could inform future development and implementation of multi-level and integrated public health strategies to reduce work-related head inju…
Relational citizenship
We draw on findings from a mixed-method study of specialised red-nosed elder-clowns in a long-term care facility to advance a model of 'relational citizenship' for individuals with dementia. Relational citizenship foregrounds the reciprocal nature of engagement and the centrality of capacities, senses, and experiences of bodies to the exercise of human agency and interconnectedness. We critically examine elder-clown strategies and techniques to i…
Arts-based health research and academic legitimacy
Using the Canadian context as a case study, the research reported here focuses on in-depth qualitative interviews with 36 researchers, artists and trainees engaged in 'doing' arts-based health research (ABHR). We begin to address the gap in ABHR knowledge by engaging in a critical inquiry regarding the issues, challenges and benefits of ABHR methodologies. Specifically, this paper focuses on the tensions experienced regarding academic legitimacy …
Improving Client-Centered Brain Injury Rehabilitation Through Research-Based Theater
Traumatic brain injury often results in physical, behavioral, and cognitive impairments perceived by health care practitioners to limit or exclude clients' full participation in treatment decision making. We used qualitative methods to evaluate the short- and long-term impact of "After the Crash: A Play About Brain Injury," a research-based drama designed to teach client-centered care principles to brain injury rehabilitation staff. We conducted …
Dementia Care at the Intersection of Regulation and Reflexivity
Quality care emerges at the intersection of policies governing long-term care, PSW rule breaking, and the supportive but undisclosed role supervisors play in these violations. Understanding this complexity has important implications for initiatives to improve care practices and to challenge legislation and policies that impede dementia care
Tacit knowledge of caring and embodied selfhood
The tacit knowledge paradigm is gaining recognition as an important source of knowledge that informs clinical decision-making. It is, however, limited by an exclusive focus on knowledge acquired through clinical practice, and a consequent neglect of the primordial and socio-cultural significance of embodied selfhood, precisely what provides the foundational structure of tacit knowledge of caring and facilitates its manifestation. Drawing on findi…
Staging data
The home as a site for long-term care
Their finest hour
When investigating older people, human geographers have been almost exclusively concerned with distributive features or experiences of ageing, the latter often in relation to residential and caring environments. From both healthcare and welfare perspectives, these fields of research are extremely important. Notwithstanding, in an attempt to broaden geography's current engagement with older people, we argue for attention to be paid to older people…
Relational citizenship
We draw on findings from a mixed-method study of specialised red-nosed elder-clowns in a long-term care facility to advance a model of 'relational citizenship' for individuals with dementia. Relational citizenship foregrounds the reciprocal nature of engagement and the centrality of capacities, senses, and experiences of bodies to the exercise of human agency and interconnectedness. We critically examine elder-clown strategies and techniques to i…
Staging data
The personal significance of home
The physical, symbolic and experiential aspects of receiving long-term care are examined in this paper using Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field. We draw on data from an ethnographic study of home care in 16 homes in urban, rural and remote locations in Ontario, Canada. Across all cases, data about domestic and caregiving routines were gathered through observation, interviews with clients and/or the primary family caregiver, interviews with …
Tacit knowledge of caring and embodied selfhood
The tacit knowledge paradigm is gaining recognition as an important source of knowledge that informs clinical decision-making. It is, however, limited by an exclusive focus on knowledge acquired through clinical practice, and a consequent neglect of the primordial and socio-cultural significance of embodied selfhood, precisely what provides the foundational structure of tacit knowledge of caring and facilitates its manifestation. Drawing on findi…
Ethnographic reflections on selfhood, embodiment and Alzheimer's disease
Explicit in the current construction of Alzheimer's disease is the assumption that memory impairment caused by cognitive deficiencies leads to a steady loss of selfhood. The insistence that selfhood is the exclusive privilege of the sphere of cognition has its origins in the modern western philosophical tradition that separates mind from body, and positions the former as superior to the latter. This dichotomy suggests a fundamental passivity of t…
The painterly hand
Expressions of personhood in Alzheimer's
This article discusses the translation of ethnographic research on embodied selfhood in Alzheimer's disease into a dramatic production for nurses and ancillary health care professionals working with persons who are cognitively impaired. The appeal of dramatic performance as an alternative medium for the translation and dissemination of research is that it provides an accessible presentation of research to audiences of diverse disciplinary backgro…
Resisting institutionalization
Arts-based health research and academic legitimacy
Using the Canadian context as a case study, the research reported here focuses on in-depth qualitative interviews with 36 researchers, artists and trainees engaged in 'doing' arts-based health research (ABHR). We begin to address the gap in ABHR knowledge by engaging in a critical inquiry regarding the issues, challenges and benefits of ABHR methodologies. Specifically, this paper focuses on the tensions experienced regarding academic legitimacy …
Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer's Disease
A growing number of scholars are turning to dramatic performance as an innovative approach to disseminating the results of qualitative research. With an interest in this aesthetic practice, the authors transformed ethnographic research on personhood in Alzheimer's disease into a dramatic production, Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer's , which was performed at the outset of focus group discussions with health practitioners. In this article, t…
From Page to Stage
In recent years, interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and social scientists has received sustained interest from many members of the academic community. However, cross-disciplinary work is often more difficult than presumed. Epistemological and methodological differences between disciplines create barriers that may impede collaborative projects. This article explores some of the unique tensions and challenges that arose from the creati…
Rethinking musicality in dementia as embodied and relational
An Aesthetic of Relationality
Research-informed theater is often informed by an assumed linear trajectory between research findings and performance, overlooking the multiple embodied perspectives that are implicated in the development of research-informed theater. To challenge this assumption, we explore how artist-researchers draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand the research findings, how they conceptualize the intended audience, and how those u…
Dementia Care at the Intersection of Regulation and Reflexivity
Quality care emerges at the intersection of policies governing long-term care, PSW rule breaking, and the supportive but undisclosed role supervisors play in these violations. Understanding this complexity has important implications for initiatives to improve care practices and to challenge legislation and policies that impede dementia care
Improving Client-Centered Brain Injury Rehabilitation Through Research-Based Theater
Traumatic brain injury often results in physical, behavioral, and cognitive impairments perceived by health care practitioners to limit or exclude clients' full participation in treatment decision making. We used qualitative methods to evaluate the short- and long-term impact of "After the Crash: A Play About Brain Injury," a research-based drama designed to teach client-centered care principles to brain injury rehabilitation staff. We conducted …
Local biology
In this article I critically examine the biology/culture dualism in the context of old age. Regarding the contextualisation of the interrelationship between biology and culture, previous studies have not adequately explored the interaction between the physiological process of ageing, the physical and social surroundings of the body and the body's intentionality. I suggest ways in which anthropological and feminist advances in deconstructions and …
A critical realist exploration of the vulnerability of staff to sexual harassment in residential long-term care
Biomedicalization of end-of-life conversations with medically frail older adults - Malleable and senescent bodies
Resisting institutionalization
Local biology
In this article I critically examine the biology/culture dualism in the context of old age. Regarding the contextualisation of the interrelationship between biology and culture, previous studies have not adequately explored the interaction between the physiological process of ageing, the physical and social surroundings of the body and the body's intentionality. I suggest ways in which anthropological and feminist advances in deconstructions and …
The painterly hand
The home as a site for long-term care
Ethnographic reflections on selfhood, embodiment and Alzheimer's disease
Explicit in the current construction of Alzheimer's disease is the assumption that memory impairment caused by cognitive deficiencies leads to a steady loss of selfhood. The insistence that selfhood is the exclusive privilege of the sphere of cognition has its origins in the modern western philosophical tradition that separates mind from body, and positions the former as superior to the latter. This dichotomy suggests a fundamental passivity of t…
Embodied selfhood in Alzheimer's disease
Dementia care practices are premised on a model of Alzheimer's disease that denies the body an agential role in the constitution and manifestation of selfhood. As a consequence, despite advances in person-centred care, the body, which is a substantive means by which persons with advancing dementia engage with the world, is treated as passive rather than active and intentional. My central argument is that dementia care practices must embrace the i…
The personal significance of home
The physical, symbolic and experiential aspects of receiving long-term care are examined in this paper using Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field. We draw on data from an ethnographic study of home care in 16 homes in urban, rural and remote locations in Ontario, Canada. Across all cases, data about domestic and caregiving routines were gathered through observation, interviews with clients and/or the primary family caregiver, interviews with …
Their finest hour
When investigating older people, human geographers have been almost exclusively concerned with distributive features or experiences of ageing, the latter often in relation to residential and caring environments. From both healthcare and welfare perspectives, these fields of research are extremely important. Notwithstanding, in an attempt to broaden geography's current engagement with older people, we argue for attention to be paid to older people…
Expressions of personhood in Alzheimer's
This article discusses the translation of ethnographic research on embodied selfhood in Alzheimer's disease into a dramatic production for nurses and ancillary health care professionals working with persons who are cognitively impaired. The appeal of dramatic performance as an alternative medium for the translation and dissemination of research is that it provides an accessible presentation of research to audiences of diverse disciplinary backgro…
Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer's Disease
A growing number of scholars are turning to dramatic performance as an innovative approach to disseminating the results of qualitative research. With an interest in this aesthetic practice, the authors transformed ethnographic research on personhood in Alzheimer's disease into a dramatic production, Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer's , which was performed at the outset of focus group discussions with health practitioners. In this article, t…
Staging data
From Page to Stage
In recent years, interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and social scientists has received sustained interest from many members of the academic community. However, cross-disciplinary work is often more difficult than presumed. Epistemological and methodological differences between disciplines create barriers that may impede collaborative projects. This article explores some of the unique tensions and challenges that arose from the creati…
Tacit knowledge of caring and embodied selfhood
The tacit knowledge paradigm is gaining recognition as an important source of knowledge that informs clinical decision-making. It is, however, limited by an exclusive focus on knowledge acquired through clinical practice, and a consequent neglect of the primordial and socio-cultural significance of embodied selfhood, precisely what provides the foundational structure of tacit knowledge of caring and facilitates its manifestation. Drawing on findi…
Dementia Care at the Intersection of Regulation and Reflexivity
Quality care emerges at the intersection of policies governing long-term care, PSW rule breaking, and the supportive but undisclosed role supervisors play in these violations. Understanding this complexity has important implications for initiatives to improve care practices and to challenge legislation and policies that impede dementia care
Improving Client-Centered Brain Injury Rehabilitation Through Research-Based Theater
Traumatic brain injury often results in physical, behavioral, and cognitive impairments perceived by health care practitioners to limit or exclude clients' full participation in treatment decision making. We used qualitative methods to evaluate the short- and long-term impact of "After the Crash: A Play About Brain Injury," a research-based drama designed to teach client-centered care principles to brain injury rehabilitation staff. We conducted …
Arts-based health research and academic legitimacy
Using the Canadian context as a case study, the research reported here focuses on in-depth qualitative interviews with 36 researchers, artists and trainees engaged in 'doing' arts-based health research (ABHR). We begin to address the gap in ABHR knowledge by engaging in a critical inquiry regarding the issues, challenges and benefits of ABHR methodologies. Specifically, this paper focuses on the tensions experienced regarding academic legitimacy …
Re-conceptualizing ‘impact’ in art-based health research
This article explores the notion of ‘impact’ in art-based health research (ABHR), and how we might re-conceptualize it through the kind of work ABHR ‘does’ in generating and disseminating knowledge. We explore ‘impact’ from a critical qualitative perspective, leveraging findings from a study based on interviews with ABHR researchers/artists/trainees. We focus on their reflections related to ‘impact’, and informed by our own experiences of produci…
A qualitative exploration of work-related head injury
Our findings suggest that, beyond the need to redress the inattention to hazards in the physical environment, there is a need to address norms that influence worker decision-making to improve the safety of workers. Using Labour Process Theory highlights an important social dynamic within workplace sectors that could inform future development and implementation of multi-level and integrated public health strategies to reduce work-related head inju…
Relational citizenship
We draw on findings from a mixed-method study of specialised red-nosed elder-clowns in a long-term care facility to advance a model of 'relational citizenship' for individuals with dementia. Relational citizenship foregrounds the reciprocal nature of engagement and the centrality of capacities, senses, and experiences of bodies to the exercise of human agency and interconnectedness. We critically examine elder-clown strategies and techniques to i…
Raising the curtain on stigma associated with dementia
Persons living with dementia and their carers experience stigma. Stigma intensifies social exclusion and threatens health and well-being. Decreasing stigma associated with dementia is a public health priority across national and international settings and is a key component of National Dementia Strategies. Research-based drama is an effective public health strategy for reducing stigma and enhancing well-being. In this article we focus on survey d…
Rethinking musicality in dementia as embodied and relational
An Aesthetic of Relationality
Research-informed theater is often informed by an assumed linear trajectory between research findings and performance, overlooking the multiple embodied perspectives that are implicated in the development of research-informed theater. To challenge this assumption, we explore how artist-researchers draw on their own embodiment and imagination as ways to understand the research findings, how they conceptualize the intended audience, and how those u…
Working at the margins
As artist and social researchers working in health research, we work ‘against the grain’ in marginalised spaces to resist the marketisation of knowledge and related neoliberal practices. Our cross-disciplinary alliance, between theatre / performance studies and critical health science, is premised on engaging the humanities, arts, and social sciences to resist the subversion of both critical qualitative research and arts-based inquiries, and to i…
A critical realist exploration of the vulnerability of staff to sexual harassment in residential long-term care
Disrupting dehumanising and intersecting patterns of modernity with a relational ethic of caring
Background: This article describes two dehumanising patterns associated with modern culture and their consequences of stigma and suffering for persons living with dementia: the increasing division, judgment and exclusion of persons based on difference, disability, and undesirability; and the increasing attention to management and control, and their links with ageism, healthism and consumerism. These patterns have been established in media, polici…
Sociology (27 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Medicine (19 works) · Political science (15 works) · Nursing (13 works) · Participatory Visual Research Methods (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Art Therapy and Mental Health (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Dementia (8 works)