Dr. Carmen Poulin
Department of Psychology
University of New Brunswick
Department of Psychology
University of New Brunswick
 Kerri Gibson
PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology, UNB Main Research Interest: The psychological effects of HRT on menopausal and post-menopausal women Secondary Interests: Selected personality characteristics of Anglophones and Francophones in Quebec |
| I entered the Clinical Psychology Program at UNB in September 2004 under Carmen’s supervision. I completed my BA (Honours) in Applied Psychology at Bishop’s University, in Lennoxville, Quebec, in 2004. My honour’s thesis was titled, “Selected personality characteristics of Anglophones and Francophones in Quebec”. My thesis looked at the following personality traits in the two groups: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, psychoticism, altruism, and conservatism. Since I have been at UNB, I have become interested in women’s issues, and qualitative research, particularly the medicalisation of menopause. My main research interest is women’s experiences with menopause and hormone replacement therapy. I am currently completing my research I apprenticeship, under Carmen’s supervision, on a project titled, “Women's decisions regarding HRT: Experiences with the medical and pharmaceutical institutions.” This project examines how the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry shapes women’s experiences of menopause, and how women in turn make sense of these complications and employ coping strategies to deal with their situations. Once my research I apprenticeship is completed, I plan to continue researching women’s experiences of menopause but with a slightly different focus; I intend to interview male partners of menopausal women. I am interested in learning more about the type of support that menopausal women receive from their male partners, and how their partners conceptualise menopause. I have also had the opportunity to become involved in other research projects. I am a research assistant for a multidisciplinary research team that is connected with the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research whose focus is to develop a province-wide dating violence prevention program. In addition, during the summer of 2005, I was involved in a research project conducted by the National Research Council of Canada which examined various community organisations’ uses of information communication technology. |