Prospective Sociology MA student Kayla Hagerty featured in FASS Story
Prospective Sociology MA student Kayla Hagerty was recently featured in a FASS Story. Kayla completed her BA Honours in Human Rights and Social Justice and Sociology at Carleton University in 2021, and will join the Sociology Masters program in Fall 2022. Read an excerpt of the story below and click here to continue reading.
In her documentary film, student researcher Kayla Hagerty opens with a startling fact: in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada experienced an 89% increase in deaths caused by apparent opioid overdoses.
This statistic is more than just a number to Hagerty, as her film – My Dad, Ian: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected the Pre-existing Opioid Epidemic in Canada – centres around the sudden death of her stepfather, Ian Harrington, who died of an accidental drug overdose just three months into lockdown.
The loss led to Hagerty – then a B.A. student in Human Rights and Social Justice and Sociology at Carleton University – completely pivoting her studies toward researching Canada’s opioid crisis.
That research resulted in the creation of a three-hour home-movie-style documentary featuring interviews with people who use drugs, people who no longer use, and those working in the harm reduction community in Hagerty’s hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.