Krystal Glowatski successfully defends her PhD thesis

Congratulations to Krystal Glowatski on the successful defence of her PhD thesis, “Restoried: Reclaiming Identity after a Relative Has Taken a Life”. Her dissertation examines how people connected to someone who has taken a life make meaning of their experiences and renegotiate identity within conditions of public judgment and private grief.

Abstract

Restoried: Reclaiming Identity after a Relative Has Taken a Life examines the lived experiences of individuals whose family member has been convicted in relation to taking a life. While criminological scholarship has attended to offenders and direct victims, little research has explored the relational aftermath experienced by family members who remain. These individuals often occupy an ambiguous and socially unrecognized position – neither fully acknowledged as victims nor supported within justice processes – resulting in stigma, silence, and identity disruption.

This dissertation explores how individuals connected to someone who has taken a life make meaning of their experiences and renegotiate identity within conditions of public judgment and private grief. Guided by Indigenous-informed principles of relational accountability and story as living knowledge, this arts-based qualitative study brought together the stories of six individuals with lived experience and six artists who stewarded those stories through circle practices and art creation. Data were generated through in-depth narrative interviews, a facilitated art retreat, artist statements, and a documentary process. Using métissage as both analytic and representational method, participant narratives, artistic interpretations, and scholarly literature were woven to highlight layered understandings of harm, responsibility, and belonging.

Findings resist neat or definitive conclusions. Rather than resolving participants’ experiences into categories, the study reveals identity as ongoing, relational, and negotiable. Silence emerged as a central and structuring force as participants described never being given the chance to explore this experience. The absence of social language for their position contributed to isolation and internalized stigma. By creating spaces for witnessing and creative expression, the project demonstrates how storytelling and art-making can disrupt singular narratives of violence and expand our understandings of victimhood.

Knowledge mobilization was embedded throughout the research design through the creation of collaborative and individual artworks and a documentary series intended to extend participant voices beyond academic contexts. This research contributes to criminology, victimology, and Indigenous-informed methodologies by challenging narrow constructions of harm and foregrounding relational approaches to justice. It invites reconsideration of who is recognized within discourses of victimization and calls for more responsive, relationally grounded practices in both research and support.