Dr. Tobias Wiggins is an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Athabasca University (AU). His federally funded research program centres transgender health and sexuality, psychoanalysis, arts-based research, queer visual culture, clinical transphobia, and cisgender psychology. Wiggins’ work addresses the ongoing pathologization of gender diversity and supports trans-competent care and social advocacy. His recent publications appear in the Transgender Studies Quarterly, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, as well as edited collections such as Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse People, The Queerness of Psychoanalysis From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond, and Sex, Sexuality and Trans Identities: Clinical Guidance for Psychotherapists and Counselors.
At AU, he coordinates the University Certificate in Gender and Social Justice Counselling, a program that integrates contemporary intersectional feminist and social justice theory with applied counselling practice, crisis intervention skills, and community-based mental health work. He has extensive experience with both in-person and online pedagogies, and teaches from a critical, transnational, and justice-oriented perspective across transgender studies, queer and feminist theory, decolonization, critical disability studies, qualitative methodologies, and psychoanalysis.
Wiggins is deeply engaged in fostering interdisciplinary academic communities and regularly organizes events while participating in conferences both locally and internationally. He directs TransLab, a research hub dedicated to producing and disseminating qualitative, theoretical, and arts-based research in Transgender Studies. He also serves as co-director of the Justice Webinar and Speaker Series (J‑Series), which features national and international scholars addressing social and transformative justice, anti-oppression, and equity. Beyond academia, he has been a lifelong community organizer, counsellor, and advocate committed to meaningful health care for marginalized communities.