Please pass this on to anyone you may know (LGBTQ) that graduated from a Catholic school in the last 8 years.

My name is Tonya Callaghan and I am a doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. My doctoral study is called Holy Homophobia: Doctrinal Disciplining of Non-Heterosexuals in Canadian Catholic Schools. As a lesbian, I certainly have encountered homophobia in Canadian Catholic schools both as a student and as a teacher, and this personal experience led me to do this particular research project. If you identify as LGBTQ (that is, as a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual woman, a bisexual man, a trans-man, a trans-woman, or just generally as queer) and graduated from a Catholic school anywhere in Ontario within the last 8 years, I would like to talk with you! I am hoping to learn more about the conditions for other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) people in Catholic schools and maybe get people to talk more about this little known aspect of Canadian schooling.

Rest assured, everything you would share with me would be kept completely confidential. You would even get to choose your own pseudonym. Our interaction would take the form of a telephone interview. It wouldn’t be a major time commitment, 45 min. to an hour, max. It may take some energy out of you, though, so I plan to plan to reciprocate in the small ways that I am able to by offering you my time and expertise in return. This may take the form of helping you with some small task or problem, providing insight into the world of academia if this interests you, academic tutoring, providing informal feedback on any writing you may be involved with such as applications for scholarships or study leaves, offering my extensive knowledge of resources available to LGBTQ individuals in Canada, and simply being an active and sincere listener. You will still be entitled to this type of compensation even if you leave the study.

If you’re interested, please get in touch with me via e-mail at t.callaghan@oise.utoronto.ca We can then have a little e-mail chat in which you can ask me any question you please about me or my study. Or, if you prefer, you can call me at (403) 289-4879. I’m in Calgary, so I am on Mountain Standard Time (that’s two hours earlier than most of Ontario’s eastern time zone).

Please let me know either way if you are interested or not. I am looking forward to hearing back from you on this sometime soon.

Sincerely,

Tonya Callaghan
PhD Candidate
Dept. of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto