The Irma M. Parhad Programmes

Dr. Parhad was born in Mosul, Iraq in 1948. She was a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at The University of Calgary and an active member of the staff of Foothills Hospital. She founded and directed the Dementia Research Clinic at the medical centre and conducted research in degeneration of the nervous system. She was awarded an Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Scholarship in 1985, and became a Medical Research Council of Canada Scientist in 1989. Her life and career, both full of energy and promise were cut short in 1994 following a year-long battle with cancer.

The Dr. Irma M. Parhad Programmes were established at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine in 1995 in recognition of the worth and capacity for achievement of people from every part of the world. The lectureship, and the more recent roundtable and studentship, are concerned with conditions that affect human health and well-being worldwide.

Some of the most destructive threats to human health arise not only from disorders traditionally studied in medicine, but also from economic, legal, psychosocial, and geopolitical issues. The Parhad Programmes are therefore designed to be transdisciplinary. They bring together students, faculty and staff from diverse faculties and institutes at the University of Calgary such as medicine, law, humanities, social sciences, communications, social work, the Institute for the Humanities, and the International Centre. Programme participants and alumni hail from many parts of the world, including Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iraq, Spain, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and the United States.