Susan Frohlick

Susan Frohlick is a Professor in the Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies at the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of British Columbia Okanagan. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from York University, an MA in Anthropology from Simon Fraser University, and a BA in Anthropology from Simon Fraser University.

Dr. Frohlick's research examines the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, transnational movement, tourism, and immigration. Her scholarship has established a reputation nationally and internationally for detailed, local ethnographic investigations of contemporary transnational "flows" of people, such as travel, tourism, migration, diaspora, and settlement, and the lived experience and formations of gender, sexuality, and racial subjectivities within these contexts. She specializes in ethnographic writing, poetry, ethnographies of sound, hearing, listening, critical tourism studies, migration, subjectivities, feminist and sensory methodologies, and community-based research.

Her extensive publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on intimate tourism markets, erotic exchanges, reproductive mobilities, and transnational subjectivities. Her work often centers on Costa Rica and Canadian contexts, exploring how mobility across borders affects social and intimate relations, individuals, and communities. Dr. Frohlick's research connects feminist theory with sensory ethnography to examine how people experience and navigate transnational spaces.

Dr. Frohlick has secured significant research funding from major Canadian granting agencies including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her grants have supported interdisciplinary workshops on reproductive mobilities, studies of local youth and global tourism, research on African immigrant and refugee youth, and investigations of sexual healthcare barriers in tourist areas.

As a dedicated educator, Dr. Frohlick teaches courses in cultural anthropology and gender, women, and sexuality studies, including specialized courses on tourism, desire, difference; love, marriage, family; sounded worlds; Okanagan tourism and the senses; and feminist geographies of (un)belonging.