Dr. Helen Vallianatos

Biography

Helen Vallianatos is currently the Associate Dean of Students and a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. She has a strong focus on collaborative and community-based research, often working within interdisciplinary teams. Her research interests encompass food, gender, body, and health, and she employs visual methods alongside semi-structured narrative interviewing in her studies. Vallianatos has previously served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs within her department, where she contributed significantly to the development of experiential learning components in the BA Honors program, emphasizing community-service learning courses. She has been recognized with the Faculty of Arts research excellence award in 2016 and the Faculty of Arts teaching award in 2012. Vallianatos is dedicated to enhancing student experiences and actively works to integrate real-world issues into academic curricula. Her teaching portfolio includes courses such as Anthropology of Gender and Nutritional Anthropology, tailoring her instruction to overlap with her research areas. Currently, she is involved in pedagogical research evaluating community-service learning and its impact on student learning outcomes, while also supervising undergraduate and graduate students in independent research projects.

Research Interests

Courses