Pier-Luc Turcotte

Pier-Luc Turcotte is an occupational therapist specializing in community health. Pier-Luc’s doctoral research dealt with community occupational therapy practices among people from low-income neighbourhoods living with various disabilities and relying on community services to support their social participation. The thesis findings highlighted the institutional mechanisms that dehumanize and exclude users considered “difficult” due to factors such as poverty and disability, and emphasized the importance of recognition to counter this exclusion.

Pier-Luc is interested in the sociopolitical aspects of social and health services among marginalized populations. Turcotte’s teaching is based on over a decade of clinical experience in community, institutional and psychiatric settings, and among Indigenous communities. In the Occupational Therapy program, Pier-Luc is responsible for courses on the psychosocial factors that influence individual and community well-being.

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Professor Turcotte is accepting new students for thesis supervision.

• A critical approach to occupational therapy and health practices
• Ecological crises and marginalized populations
• Respiratory health and environmental pollution
• Medical assistance in dying and social justice
• Heat islands and climate inequality in urban settings
• Environmental implications of risk and danger
• Incarceration and psychiatric (de)institutionalization
• Biomedicalization and power in systems of care
• Qualitative research
• Critical theory

Pier-Luc Turcotte’s research program aims to study the risks and physical, psychological, social and economic vulnerabilities arising from the ecological crises that constitute the main threat to human health in the 21st century. Using innovative philosophical, theoretical and methodological approaches applied to health, this research program focuses on documenting the effects of ecological crises (“polycrisis”) on the health of marginalized populations.

Pier-Luc’s first project, funded by SSHRC, studies the experience of persons with respiratory difficulties in highly polluted environments due to forest fires or industrial and urban pollution. A second project, funded by the CIHR, takes a community research approach to improve cancer care in two Yukon Indigenous communities where lung cancer is the most deadly. A third project, affiliated with the Clinique interdisciplinaire en droit social de l’Outaouais, aims to support people experiencing homelessness who are exposed to heat islands. Finally, Pier-Luc studies the normalization of medical assistance in dying in the context of social inequity and access to care.

See Pier-Luc Turcotte’s publications on ResearchGate and Google Scholar.

Selection of peer reviewed articles

• Turcotte, P. L., & Barlott, T. (2024). Shame – Rupture – Becoming: Resisting complicity in oppression in occupational science. Journal of Occupational Science.
• Turcotte, P. L., & Lemmens, T. (2024). La normalisation troublante de la mort médicalement administrée au Québec et au Canada : état des lieux. Aporia.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D., Johansson, J., Saïd-Gagné, S., & Perron, A. (2024). Subversive mythical figures and feminist resistance: On the rise of posthuman ‘professionals’. Nursing Inquiry.
• Johansson, J. A., Turcotte, P.-L., & Holmes, D. (2024). Assembling packs: Outreach nurses, disaffiliated persons, and sorcerers. Nursing Philosophy, 25, e12486.
• Turcotte, P.-L., & Holmes, D. (2024). Vanishing academics: On the importance of speed and becoming-imperceptible. Nursing Inquiry.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D. (2024). The Shadow Side of Occupational Therapy: Necropower, State Racism and Colonialism. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy.
• Holmes, D., Turcotte, P.-L., Johansson, J., Orser, L., Adam, S. (2023). Toward an Ontology of the Mutant in Health Sciences: Re/defining the Person from Cronenberg’s Perspective. Nursing Inquiry.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D., Murray, S.J. (2023). The Shiny New Object: Deconstructing the Patient-Oriented Paradigm in Health Sciences. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D. (2023). From Domestication to Imperial Patronage: Deconstructing the Biomedicalisation of Occupational Therapy. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Health, Illness and Medicine.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D., Perron, A. (2021). L’outil d’évaluation multi-clientèle comme mécanisme de contrôle des soins à domicile : une analyse poststructuraliste. Recherche en Soins Infirmiers.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Holmes, D. (2021). The (Dis)obedient Occupational Therapist: A Reflection on Dissent Against Disciplinary Propaganda. Brazilian Journal of Occupational Therapy.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Rey, L., Brousselle, A. (2021). L’évaluation évolutive, de la théorie à la pratique: perspective de praticiens québécois. Revue canadienne d’évaluation de programme/Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation.
• Ouimet, M.-J., Turcotte, P.-L., Rainville, L.-C., Abraham, Y.-M., Kaiser, D., Badillo-Amberg, I. (2021). Public health and degrowth working synergistically: What leverage for public health? Visions for Sustainability.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Carrier, A., Levasseur, M. (2020). Levers for Change and Unexpected Outcomes of a Participatory Research Partnership: Toward Fostering Older Adults’ Social Participation to Promote Health Equity. American Journal of Community Psychology.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Drolet, M.-J. (2020). Les ergothérapeutes doivent déclarer l’urgence climatique/Occupational Therapists Must Declare the Climate Emergency. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy.
• Turcotte, P.-L., Carrier, A., & Levasseur, M. (2019). Community-based participatory research remodelling occupational therapy to foster older adults’ social participation. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy.

Book chapter

• Turcotte, P.-L., Sévigny, A. (2020). Le Québec aime-t-il vraiment les personnes âgées? Dialogue entre un millénarial et une bébé-boumeuse. Dans F. Huot (Ed.). (2020). L’État du Québec 2021. Québec, CAN : L’Institut du Nouveau Monde.