Benjamin Gagnon Chainey

Benjamin Gagnon Chainey, pht, PhD, is a physiotherapist, author, and postdoctoral researcher in the HEALS medical humanities program at Dalhousie University, in Halifax.

He completed a PhD in French-language literature, jointly between the Université de Montréal (Canada) and Nottingham Trent University (UK). His dissertation conducted a comparative analysis of late 19th century syphilis and late 20th century AIDS literatures, through the lens of queer aesthetics and phenomenology.

A 2017 Scholar from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, he is also the coordinator, since 2020, of RéCITS – International and Transversal Creation Network on Care, which brings together an international and transdisciplinary community from several countries, around the roles and importance of creativity and intersectional dialogues in the context of care, in all its forms. He is also the Communications Officer for the Canadian Association for Health Humanities (CAHH).

He has co-edited several journal issues and collective works at the confluence of literary criticism, creation and experiences of illness and care. In 2022, he published his first novel, entitled Candy, with the publisher Héliotrope.