Alejandra (Ale) is a Research Trainee at the Predictive Care Lab and a second-year PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. 

Ale’s PhD research focuses on experiences of time in eating disorder recovery, and the ways in which digital spaces affect and play into those recovery trajectories. Prior to this research, Ale did her master’s thesis in History, exploring how newspapers covered the topic of mental illness and mobilized this category in the service of political goals. 

Overall, Ale is committed to continuing the work of giving voice to lived experience in mental healthcare and policy, and to changing how we view and think about recovery as long-term processes. 

At the Predictive Care lab, Ale is researching how online platforms, particularly algorithmically-driven social media, trouble linear patterns of information-sharing and contribute to new temporalities of eating disorder recovery.