Michelle Charette is an applied philosopher and interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS), phenomenology, and the medical humanities. With a PhD from York University and an MA from Toronto Metropolitan University, her research critically navigates the relationships between bodies, technologies, and healthcare.

Her doctoral project interrogates the rise of e-health approaches to chronic pain, ranging from immersive serious games and symptom-tracking apps to facial coding systems, and explores their implications for how chronic pain is understood, experienced, and treated. This work emphasizes how digital tools mediate the local politics of medical treatment and the lived experience of pain. 

Her current research advances an applied phenomenology of extended reality in clinical education. This project examines how XR-based medical simulations affect embodied skill acquisition and empathic practices. By employing a novel methodology (video-stimulated, front-loaded phenomenological interviews), she plans to uncover subtle bodily, affective, and social dimensions of virtual training environments. 

Michelle has over 100 hours of experience conducting ethnographic observation in hospital and clinical contexts, and extensive qualitative interview experience with healthcare professionals and patients. Currently, she is a researcher with Connected Minds: Neural & Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society, a $105 million CFREF initiative advancing socially responsible intelligent technologies. Within this program, she leads an assessment of co-creation practices across interdisciplinary research teams, focusing on how community and stakeholder input shapes innovation in neural and machine health systems.