Effective Play

Dr. Lauren McNamara

Dr. Lauren McNamara is an education researcher, professor, healthy schools advocate and Ashoka Fellow. Her research interests focus on social, cultural and institutional routines of the school community and the ways they seed and reinforce patterns of bias, exclusion and inequity that undermine children’s well-being, school engagement, and quality of life. She leads collaborative active research to discover and integrate preventive, assets-based approaches to making schools more humane and equitable. She has over 20 years of experience working in school-university collaborations. As a result of her significant work and impact in the mental health space, Dr. McNamara was the recipient of Pathstone’s Hope Award in 2019. She is currently a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s Working Group on Children and Schools and an executive of the Ontario Healthy Schools Coalition.