Sonja Boon

Sonja Boon is an award-winning researcher, writer, teacher, and flutist. Professor of Gender Studies at Memorial University from 2008–2023, Sonja is passionate about stories and storytelling. She has published on a variety of topics, from considertions of gender, embodied identity, and citizenship in eighteenth-century medical letters, to breastfeeding selfies and virtual activism, autobiographies of infanticide, auto/ethnography and the embodiment of maternal grief, and craftivism in the feminist classroom. She is the author or co-author of five books, most recently, The Routledge Introduction Auto/Biography in Canada (with Laurie McNeill, Julie Rak, and Candida Rifkind, 2023). Her literary work appears in ROOM, The Ethnic Aisle, Geist, Riddle Fence, and Pinhole Poetry, among others. Sonja was principal flutist with the Portland Baroque Orchestra (Oregon, USA) for six years, and has also appeared as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician with such organizations as the Toronto Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, the Holland Festival of Early Music, and Osaka World Expo, among others. Sonja was awarded the Ursula Franklin Award in Gender Studies by the Royal Society of Canada in 2020, and in 2022 was elected to the Royal Society’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.