Barbara Neis (Ph.D.) is a University Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Senior Research Associate in the SafetyNet Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research at Memorial University. Professor Neis is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and President (2012-2014) of the Canadian Association for Research on Work and Health. She was a Trudeau Foundation Fellow between 2006 and 2009. Professor Neis received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto, in 1988. Her research focuses broadly on interactions between work, environment, health and communities in rural and remote contexts. She has researched many aspects of the Newfoundland and Labrador fisheries including gender and fisheries, occupational asthma to snow crab, participatory ergonomics, and fishing vessel safety, as well as fishermen's ecological knowledge and science and rebuilding collapsed fisheries and threatened communities.
Her current research responsibilities include acting as Project Director on a 7-year Partnership grant from SSHRC entitled On the Move: Employment-Related Geographical Mobility in the Canadian Context, co-investigator, theme co-lead and member of the Research Management Committee of the Marine, Envioronmental, Observation, Prediction and Response Network of Centres of Excellence, and co-chair of the Newfoundland node of the SSHRC-funded Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy.