Website Official website Name Kirsty Duncan | Political party Liberal | |
 | ||
Full Name Kirsty Ellen Duncan Profession medical geographer, professor, politician Office Member of the Canadian House of Commons since 2008 Parents Helen Duncan, Errol Duncan Books Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist's Search for a Killer Virus Similar People Carolyn Bennett, Navdeep Bains, Hunter Tootoo, Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly Profiles | ||
In The Riding with MP Kirsty Duncan
Kirsty Ellen Duncan (born October 31, 1966) is a Canadian politician and medical geographer from Ontario, Canada. Duncan is the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liberal Party of Canada in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke North and was appointed Minister of Science, on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on November 4, 2015. She is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and has published a book about her 1998 expedition to uncover the cause of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.
Contents
- In The Riding with MP Kirsty Duncan
- Kirsty duncan the war on science is now over
- Education
- Career
- Federal politics
- References
Kirsty duncan the war on science is now over
Education
After graduating from Kipling Collegiate Institute in 1985 as an Ontario Scholar, Duncan studied geography and anthropology at the University of Toronto. She then entered graduate school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and completed a Ph.D. in geography in 1992.
Career
From 1993 to 2000, Duncan taught meteorology, climatology and climate change at the University of Windsor. In 1992, as she became aware of the increasing probability of a global flu crisis, she was led to investigate the cause of the similar 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, saying, "I was horrified we didn’t know what caused [Spanish flu], and also knew that if we could find fragments of the virus, we might be able to find a better flu vaccine".
Though at the time she "knew nothing about influenza", she began what she called a "six-month crash course in virology". Eventually, she began searching for possible frozen samples of lung and brain tissue that might contain the virus. Her initial thoughts led her to think of Alaska, as it contains large areas of permafrost, which would leave the viruses intact, but the search proved fruitless.
Eventually, after several years of searching, Duncan learned of seven miners who had died from the Spanish flu and were buried in the small town of Longyearbyen, Norway, an area that would contain permafrost. She then began assembling a team of scientists to accompany her. After several more years of preparation, which involved garnering various permissions to perform the exhumations, the ground survey began in 1998. However, the samples were not viable, as the bodies were not in the permafrost, and the expedition ultimately proved a disappointment.
In 2003, Duncan wrote a book about her expedition, entitled Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist's Search for a Killer Virus. Published by the University of Toronto Press, it details Duncan's process and the expedition itself. After the book's publication, Duncan began speaking about pandemics, which led her to begin teaching corporate social responsibility at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. In 2008, Duncan published a second book, Environment and Health: Protecting our Common Future.
Duncan is currently an adjunct professor teaching both medical geography at the University of Toronto and global environmental processes at Royal Roads University, and served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
Federal politics
In February 2008, Roy Cullen announced that he would not be running in the next federal election, and Duncan was appointed as the next Liberal candidate. She was considered a "significant addition toward Dion's goal of fielding 103 women candidates in the next election." She was elected in the 2008 general election and re-elected in the 2011 and 2015 general elections.
On November 4, 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed her to the Cabinet as Minister of Science. Duncan was tasked with establishing the new position of chief science officer that would serve as a replacement to the position of national science adviser role eliminated by Stephen Harper in 2008.