Janet McLaughlin


Janet McLaughlin is an Associate Professor of Health Studies and a Research Associate with the International Migration Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in medical anthropology, with interests in the areas of global and environmental health, food systems, labour, social justice, citizenship, transnational migration and the social impacts of autism. Her research and publications have focused on various areas of migrant workers’ health, rights and well-being, including: access to health care and workers’ compensation; women’s experiences of gender-based violence; occupational, mental, sexual and reproductive health; social determinants of health; and the impacts of separation on migrant families. She is co-founder of the Migrant Worker Health Project, www.migrantworkerhealth.ca, which promotes accessible health care for migrant workers. Dr. McLaughlin is currently researching autism policy and family impacts in Ontario.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

Two trajectories cross over each other showing areas of alignment and misalignment.

Mind over metrics: How can we tell if two brains (or AI models) are alike?

The ability to record from large populations of neurons has triggered the development of myriad methods for comparing them. But we’re still grappling with how to convert measures of likeness into a better mechanistic understanding.

By Alex Williams
17 August 2026 | 7 min read
Mice playing, engaged in learning and memory: some of their brains are yellow, and some are red, matching a red and yellow legend that runs through the image to underscore both memory and learning.

This paper changed my life: A technical breakthrough for memory studies

In a 2007 Science paper, Mark Mayford and his colleagues found that some neurons activated during learning are also recruited during memory retrieval. Noelia Weisstaub shares how this study and others drove an era of great progress in tool development.

By Noelia Weisstaub
14 August 2026 | 5 min read

Early experience reshapes zebrafish retinal cells, alters behavior

The cells undergo a classic form of plasticity previously thought to occur only in downstream visual circuits.

By Siddhant Pusdekar
13 August 2026 | 0 min watch