Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Dean Sioban Nelson is a leading nursing scholar. She is author of two books, including the acclaimed ‘Say little do much’: nursing, nuns and hospitals in the nineteenth century, University of Pennsylvania Press (2001), a history of religious hospital foundation and nursing in the nineteenth century; and five edited collections, including, with Suzanne Gordon, the prize winning Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered, Cornell University Press (2006), a groundbreaking work on the challenges facing contemporary nursing. Her seventh book, Notes on Nightingale, The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon, a collection of essays on Florence Nightingale in honour of the centenary of her death, co-edited with Anne Marie Rafferty, was published in August 2010. She was Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Inquiry for over a decade, and is currently co-editor (with Suzanne Gordon) of the interdisciplinary ‘Culture and Politics of Healthcare Work’ series, Cornell University Press (ILR imprint). Her current research interests include the investigation of the impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on global nursing in the mid twentieth century; health policy, most particularly with respect to the assessment of competency in professional practice and the regulation of health professionals; mobility and the global health professional workforce; and the transnational history of nursing.

Professor Nelson came to Canada from Australia in November 2005 to assume the role of Dean of the Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. Formerly Head of the School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, she was a leading figure in nursing education and scholarship in that country. Her nursing education took place in Darwin, in the far north of Australia. She has also practised in acute care, critical care, home care and community nursing. Professor Nelson has a strong background in international nursing and is committed to the continued expansion of the Bloomberg Faculty’s international portfolio.