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I completed my BA and MA in psychology at York University and Wilfrid Laurier University respectively. I then pursued a PhD in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto specialising in medical sociology. Upon completion of my doctoral training, I joined Wilfrid Laurier University first as contract faculty in 2007 and then as full-time faculty the following year. In the Department of Sociology, I have served as Graduate Director (2015-2016, 2019-2020), Undergraduate Advisor (2016-2017), and Chair (2017-2020). I have also spent two research leaves at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2010, 2015), where I pursued training and research in conversation analysis. I am currently a Research Fellow in the Laurier Centre for Studies in Canada.
My research interests are situated at the intersection of health, society, and interaction. In my current research, I use conversation analysis on video and audio recorded data, involving people going about their everyday lives, to identify the practices through which identity categories and health statuses are made relevant (or made available for inference) in interaction. I have been using these insights to understand the basis upon which ‘difference’ between and among people are realised in mundane conversations. In the past, I have collaborated with community-based organizations and with health researchers, mainly in the area of HIV/AIDS, to produce practical research to improve the delivery of services and the promotion of health. During these collaborations, I conducted several qualitative research methods workshops with social service workers and peer researchers to help build research capacities of community partners.
I am currently leading two interrelated projects.
The first is The HIV, Health, and Interaction Study, a conversation analytic study on naturalistic talk involving people living with HIV/AIDS. This work aligns with other critical social science research that seeks to trouble normative assumptions that infuse and premise mundane conversations.
The second uses conversation analysis to identify the interactional organization of news announcements (of HIV, of LGBT identity).
Aguinaldo, J. P. & Greenspan, N. R. (2024). Constructing victims in news coverage of HIV criminalization: Claims-making activities and HIV non-disclosure. Canadian Review of Sociology, 61(1), 67-84.
Aguinaldo, J. P. (2022). Ethics review and conversation analysis. Research Ethics, 8(4), 319-328.
Aguinaldo, J. P. (2019). Conversation analysis and critical social science on HIV/AIDS: The interactional organization of disclosing HIV. In E. Mykhalovsky and V. Namaste. (Eds.). Social science and HIV/AIDS: Critique, research and engagement (pp. 135-160). Vancouver: UBC Press.
Aguinaldo, J. P. (2018). ‘Dilemmas of voice’ in Community-based HIV Research. In S. Kleinknecht, van den Scott, and C. B. Sanders. (Eds.). The Craft of Qualitative Research (pp. 271-277). Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press.
SY 281: Qualitative methods
SY 312: Introduction to Conversation Analysis
SY 452: Critical Perspectives on HIV/AIDS
SY 601: Advanced Qualitative Methods
SY 603: Professionalisation
SY 621: Social Constructions of Health and Illness