Dr. Amanda D. Watson's research interests include care, labour, social reproduction, affect, disability, climate crisis, and media representation of maternal labour and identity. She teaches on politics of family, global problems and the culture of capitalism, and power and conflict in Canadian society. Watson is an Associate Member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies.

Current projects include the Imagine Kin Project, investigating how young adults talk about their future relations in the context of interlocking crises; Politics of Social Justice Parenting, exploring the experiences of parents of young children through interlocking emergencies and trends in parenting; and Politics of Birthstrike, exploring how young adults reconcile their desires for ethical family life with resurging population control initiatives to reduce their climate footprint by having fewer children.

PhD (Feminist and Gender Studies), University of Ottawa
MSW, Carleton University
BA (Sociology), University of British Columbia

Care; labour; social reproduction; affect theory; reproductive justice; disability; feminist media studies; climate anxiety; kinship

Books

• . co-authors Christine Gervais and Shanisse Kleuskens. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens University Press (2025).
• . Vancouver, BC: UBC Press (2020).

Edited Collections

• "Social Work, Motherhood, and Mothering: Critical Feminist Perspectives" with Diane Fierheller, Erin Kuri, May Friedman, Andrea O’Reilly, Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (2022).
• "What is Intersectional about Intersectionality Now?" with Corinne Mason, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice, 38.1 (2017).

Book Chapters

• “The Juggling Mother” in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, 2^nd Edition. Toronto, ON: Demeter Press (2021).
• “Usually the mother: Dilation and the medical management of intersex children," with Celeste Orr in From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine. Toronto: Demeter Press (2021).
• “Feminist Politics still needs motherhood” in Troubling Motherhood: (Re)Conceptualizing Maternity and the State in Global Politics, Past and Present and Future (181-196). Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020).
• “We changed her nappies, we saw that she was a girl: Caster Semenya’s femininity and the power of maternal testimony” with Celeste Orr in Mothering, Mothers, and Sport: Experiences, Representations, Resistances (15-48). Toronto: Demeter Press (2018).
• “How to get through the day with pain and sadness: An investigation of temporality and disability” with Shoshana Magnet in Disability Media Studies: Media, Popular Culture, and the Meanings of Disability (247-271). New York: New York University Press (2017).

Refereed Journal Articles

• “Quelling anxiety as intimate work: Maternal responsibility to eliminate bad feelings emerging from precarity,” Studies in Social Justice, 10(2). Brock University: Social Justice Research Institute (2017).
• “Of suspected cheats and ‘super-crips’: Gender, Race, and Class at the Olympic Games,” with Heather Hillsburg and Lori Chambers, Global Citizenship and Equity. (2015).
• “The power of the first hour: Is there a transnational breastfeeding crisis?” with Corinne Mason, International Journal of Feminist Politics, Taylor & Francis Online (2015).
• Technovisibilités et risque : politique du scanner corporel (Technovisibilities and risk: New manoeuvres with full-body scanners), with Shoshana Magnet, POLI—Politique de l’image (2015).
• “Discipline, resistance, solace and the body,” with Christine Gervais, Religions, 5(1): 277-303. (2014).

• 2023 Cormack Teaching Award
• 2022 Excellence in Teaching Award in Online and Blended Education
• 2021-23 Principal Investigator, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant, "Politics of Birthstrike".

•  Interview in Ripple of Change Magazine, 8 Mar 2025
•  quoted, CBC News, 19 June 2024
•  CityNews Vancouver, 9 May 2024
•  radio/TV interview, CBC Radio One, BC Today, 26 June 2023
• “How to support mothers,” Radio/TV interview, CBC Radio One, BC Today, 11 May 2023
•  radio interview, CBC Radio One, The Current with Matt Galloway, 14 Mar 2023
• “Half of Canadian workers will job hunt,” television interview, CBC National News, 8 Jan 2023
• quoted in New York Times, 30 Aug 2022
•  Toronto Star’s This Matters, 25 Aug 2022.
•  Guardian, 19 Aug 2022
• Radio interviews, CBC The Early Edition, 6 Jun 2022.
• Radio interview, CBC Radio West, 4 May 2022.
• “The Motherload: Why mums are leaving the workplace,” Radio interview, CBC On the Coast, 3 May 2022
•  Opinion, 8 Mar 2022, Conversation, Tyee.
•  Video interview, Telus Talks, 11 Jan 2022.
  
•  quoted by Stephanie Nolen, 28 Jul 2021,
• book excerpted, Today’s Parent, 2 Dec 2020.
• Opinion, Globe and Mail, 20 Nov 2020.
• quoted by Marie-Danielle Smith, �Ѳ������𲹲�’s, 17 Nov 2020.
• quoted by Jenn Wint, 17 Nov 2020.
• Television, CTV News, 5 Oct 2020.
• Radio, News1130, 23 Sept 2020.

Dr. Watson's role and FASS News article on  (Sept 2019)