Dr. Yukari Seko

Dr. Yukari Seko is an associate professor at the School of Professional Communication and an adjunct scientist at Bloorview Research Institute Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. She is Chair of the Creative School Course-Based Research Ethics Committee (CBREC) and a member of TMU Research Ethics Board. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication & Culture from York/TMU joint graduate program. 

Dr. Seko’s program of research explores the potential role of communication in disrupting normative values and biases within dominant health paradigms. Through her innovative, community-centred research, Dr. Seko thrives to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogues where a critical health communication lens can be meaningfully implemented to health research, policies, and service delivery. 

While Dr. Seko is a methodologically versatile researcher, her expertise resides in critical narrative inquiry. Much of her work takes a critical narrative approach to research with historically marginalized people including people with physical and mental disabilities and racialized persons whose voices are frequently engulfed by labels of deviance and/or abnormalities. She has been researching Asian immigrant food practices focusing on children’s home-packed lunches to school and culturally appropriate meal provision to older adults from Asian backgrounds. 

Since joining TMU in 2019, she has secured over $150,000 research funding as Principal Investigator and over $1,260,000 as Co-Applicant (3 SSHRC grants, 2 CIHR grants, 6 TMU internal grants) and mentored many Highly Qualified Personnels and graduate students.