Let me introduce you all to my dear friend, Ruhi Snyder, who is one of the most inspiring thinkers I know. Ruhi is an Independent Researcher who studies the intersections of sleep, shift work, and aging. Ruhi has worked as a Sleep Technologist and Educator at Kingston General Hospital’s Sleep Lab at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre for the past ten years.
Her longitudinal self-case study, looks at the impact of shift work on wellbeing. Using her own experiences as a sleep technologist doing shift work in a sleep lab, Ruhi collected subjective and objective data on the impact of shift work on her physical and mental wellbeing over the course of five years. In conversation with the scientific literature on shift work, she created an experimental program that explored how self-regulation, notably physical exercise and diet, might counteract the negative impacts of shift work on her wellbeing. Her findings were far more complex than she could have anticipated.
Ruhi’s work is a quintessential ‘Impossible Project’ because the complexity of her research question cannot be contained within a single discipline and because her findings would require a massive shift in how the scientific community thinks about wellness. By studying herself, Ruhi became fascinated with the unruly question of research ‘variables’ and the extent to which those variables were the very factors that made her human. ‘Controlling’ those variables became a task that was overly demanding. Any study of shift work, sleep, and self-regulation would need to foreground the humanity of its subjects: the dynamism of their lives, the shifting capacities of their bodies at different times, the changing economics of their lives. The limitations of the very concept of an individual study subject were made visible to Ruhi as she juggled family, research, and her personal goals. Her research raised bigger questions about the economic, social and political systems that underwrite sleep and shift work. Sleep became a barometer for measuring and thinking about the health of our broader society.
Ruhi is quickly becoming a leader in sleep and society. Her current work focuses on educating adolescents about sleep and health, changing perceptions about aging and preventative medicine. I often find myself thinking about Ruhi’s research during our Impossible Projects. I hope to have an opportunity to introduce you all to her in person one day.
Dr. Sarah Kastner, PhD
Director of Social Development at the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC)
Native Women’s Association of Canada
Queens University, Kingston, Ontario
