Tracy Moniz (Associate Professor)
PhD (York University/Toronto Metropolitan University), MA (University of Western Ontario), BA (Hons) (University of Toronto)
Tracy Moniz is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. She is also an Adjunct professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at MSVU and affiliated scientific staff at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. She has a PhD in Communication and Culture, a Master of Arts degree in Journalism, and an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature.
Broadly, Dr. Moniz is interested in ways of knowing that challenge traditional paradigms, and she explores this interest through multiple paths. Foremost, she is interested in stories and storytellers and understanding how a sense of story enables people to make meaning of their own and others’ experiences. Her research interests include health humanities, narrative, writing practice and pedagogy, health communication, gender and media, and qualitative research methods. She pursues individual and collaborative research that contributes knowledge across disciplines and at the local, national, and international levels.
Currently, Dr. Moniz explores the role of writing to advance humanistic care in health professions education and practice, focusing on (1) uses of reflective writing in medical education and (2) the lessons learned from the narratives that health professionals, patients, and family caregivers write about their experiences of illness and care. She facilitates workshops on narrative medicine and writing for reflection and resilience for learners at all levels across the health professions.
Her doctoral research focused on news media (mis)representations of women’s labour during the Second World War in Canada. She continues to engage with questions of how gender ideology imprints itself on media discourse—past, present, and particularly in times of armed conflict. She is part of a network of regional scholars working to promote community storytelling around lived experiences of war and peace.
Dr. Moniz teaches undergraduate writing courses and graduate courses in health communication; gender and communication; media, culture, and society; and communication theory. Prior to joining the Mount in 2013, she taught at the University of Toronto (2005-2013) in areas such as expressive and historical narrative, business and media writing, and journalistic investigation. Over the years, she has worked in journalism, public relations, and professional writing and editing. She also ran a communication consulting business, providing communications support and education to private- and public-sector organizations.
Dr. Moniz supervises graduate theses in the following areas:
§ Narrative
§ Writing (professional, reflective, creative nonfiction, memoir, life writing)
§ Health Communication
§ Professional Identity
§ Gender and Media
§ Women and Work
§ Journalism and Journalism History
§ Qualitative methods (such as narrative analysis, thematic analysis, content analysis, media analysis, interview research)
Selected Publications
Journal Articles (Peer Reviewed)
Moniz, T., Gaspar, C., Warren, A., Watling, C. (2021). Dual and duelling purposes: An exploration of educators’ perspectives on the use of reflective writing to remediate professionalism in residency. Medical Education, 56(2), 176-185. doi: 10.1111/medu.14625
Bartlett, R.A., den Elzen, K., Moniz, T., Rehberg Sedo, D. (2021). Two sides of the coin: A grief memoir and its readers. Life Writing. doi: 10.1080/14484528.2021.1949673
Moniz, T., Golafshani, M., Gaspar, C., Adams, N.E., Haidet, P., Sukhera, J., Volpe, R.L., de Boer, C., Lingard, L. (2021). The Prism Model: Advancing a theory of practice for arts and humanities in medical education. Perspectives on Medical Education, 10, 207-214. doi: 10.1007/s40037-021-00661-0
Moniz, T., Golafshani, M., Gaspar, C., Adams, N.E., Haidet, P., Sukhera, J., Volpe, R.L., de Boer, C., Lingard, L. (2021). The Prism Model for integrating the arts and humanities into medical education. Academic Medicine, 96(8), 1225. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003949
Moniz, T., Golafshani, M., Gaspar, C., Adams, N.E., Haidet, P., Sukhera, J., Volpe, R.L., de Boer, C., Lingard, L. (2021). How Are the Arts and Humanities Used in Medical Education? Results of a Scoping Review, Academic Medicine, 96(8), 1213-1222. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000004118
Moniz, T., Pack, R., Lingard, L., Watling, C. (2021). Voices from the Front Lines: An Analysis of Physicians’ Reflective Narratives about Flaws with the ‘System’.” The Journal of Medical Humanities, 42, 737-752. doi: 10.1007/s10912-021-09690-6
Moniz, T., Costella, J., Golafshani, M., Watling, C., Lingard, L. (2019). Bringing narratives from physicians, patients, and caregivers together: A scoping review of published research. Medical Humanities Published Online Ahead of Print: 08 February 2019. doi:10.1136/medhum-2017-011424
Moniz, T., Lingard, L., Watling, C. (2017). Stories doctors tell. Journal of the American Medical Association, 318(2), 124-125. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.5518
Moniz, T. (2017). Stepping out: Representations of female sexuality in the Canadian television series Bomb Girls. Canadian Journal of Media Studies, 15(1), 1-33.
Moniz, T. (2017). From Bread-maker to bomb-builder: [Re]constructing gender in the Canadian television series Bomb Girls. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 12(3), 207-224. doi:10.1108/QROM-11-2016-1459
Moniz, T. (2016). A woman’s place is in the war: Gendering the gaps in newspaper coverage of women’s labour in wartime Canada, 1939-1945. Journalism History, 42(2), 81-90.
Moniz, T., Arntfield, S., Miller, K., Lingard, L., Watling, C., Regehr, G. (2015). “Considerations in the use of reflective writing for student assessment: Issues of reliability and validity.” Medical Education, 49(9), 901-908. doi: 10.1111/medu.12771
Moniz, T. (2015). Femininity in focus: Representations of women’s wage labour in Canadian newspapers, 1939-1945. Canadian Journal of Media Studies, 13(1), 1-34.
Books
Eichler, M., Green, R., Moniz, T. (Eds.). (2022). In Many Voices: Stories of War and Peace in Nova Scotia. Nimbus Publishing.
Moniz, T. (Ed.). (2013). Writing History: A Collection by New Writers. (3rd ed). Toronto: Life Rattle Press.