Diana C. Parry

Research interests

My primary line of scholarship explores the intersections of health and well-being, technology, gender and leisure with an intent to understand quality of life. As a feminist scholar, I intentionally advance a social justice agenda centered on women’s health, recognizing and valuing women as the experts of their own experiences. My research reveals how women understand, cope and advance their well-being through leisure experiences, pursuits and activities, which are often disregarded, discredited and trivialized by the medical model. That is, women’s health concerns have long been ignored and neglected, along with their personal insights into their well-being. My research challenges the medicalization of women’s health and the prevailing assumption that such experiences can be understood solely through the documentation of physiological causes and technological solutions, the dominant focus of research on women’s health. I demonstrate women’s health is personal and political, dynamic, complex and multidimensional with important links to leisure. By challenging the medical model, I attempt to shift attention toward social, emotional, physical, spiritual and sexual dimensions of well-being – in other words, a full range of quality of life issues. This line of research has forwarded unique and innovative substantive areas to leisure studies, including women’s encounters with menopause, infertility, pregnancy, midwifery, cancer, motherhood, women’s use of technology to consume sexually explicit material and erotic capital.

Graduate supervision

I am currently accepting applications from graduate students with research interests related to:

• Gender
• Feminist theories
• Women's health
• Leisure
• Qualitative research/creative analytic practice
• Digitality

Graduate studies application details

Teaching interests

• Gender
• Feminist theories
• Women’s health
• Leisure
• Qualitative methodologies 

Education

BA, Brock Univeristy 

MA, University of Waterloo

PhD, University of Illinois

Selected publications

Parry, D.C., Filice, E., & Johnson, C.W. (2023). Algorithmic heteronormativity: Powers and pleasures of dating and hook-up apps. Sexualities.

Matharu, A., Filice, E., Parry, D. C., & Johnson, C. W. (2023). “They're all honky bros…”: Exploring Canadian women of color’s experiences using geo-social networking applications. Women’s Studies in Communication.

Johnson, C. W., & Parry, D. C (2022). Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry. 2^nd ed. Los Angeles: Routledge.

Parry, D. C., & Johnson, C. W. (2020). Promiscuous Perspectives: Explorations of Sex and Leisure. London, UK: Routledge.

Parry, D. C., Johnson, C.W., & Fullagar, S. (Eds.). (2018). Digital Dilemmas: Transforming Gender Identities and Power Relations in Everyday Life. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Press.

Parry, D. C. (Ed.). (2018). Feminisms in Leisure Studies: Advancing a Fourth Wave. London, UK: Routledge.