Where Health Research meets
Cinematic Storytelling

The Healing Lens Research Lab is a transdisciplinary research and creative practice lab in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. The Lab explores how Digital Stories and Documentary Films, when created and mobilized with care, can shape education, influence practice, support wellbeing, and contribute to more humanistic health systems.

Learn More about the Lab

Lab Director

Dr. Mike Lang

Dr. Mike Lang is a researcher, documentary filmmaker, digital storytelling facilitator, and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary. His work explores how documentary film and digital storytelling can be used ethically and rigorously in health research, education, advocacy, and therapeutic contexts.

Learn more about Mike
View UCalgary Profile

Creative Outputs

Documentary Films

To extend its work beyond the academy, the Healing Lens Research Lab has established a co-production company called Healing Lens Media. This allows us to work with film industry, community, and health system partners to finance and produce compelling health and wellness documentary films, web series, and educational curriculums that combine research insight, cinematic craft, and ethical participatory film production practices.

Learn more about Healing Lens Media

Digital Stories

Dr. Mike Lang has facilitated the creation of over 1,000 digital stories with patients, family caregivers, healthcare providers, researchers, students, and community partners over the past 15 years. He continues to train digital storytelling facilitators through Common Language Digital Storytelling, helping others develop the ethical, relational, and creative skills required to support meaningful story work.

Learn more about our DST Research Projects
Learn more about Common Language DST Facilitator Training

Impact Campaigns

After producing compelling, research-based participatory films and digital stories, the Healing Lens Research Lab  places equal emphasis on the impact campaigns that surround each creative output. These campaigns are designed to help stories reach the audiences they were created for, spark meaningful dialogue, inform education and professional practice, and contribute to policy and systems change.
Learn more about our current Impact Campaign

Our Research Domains

  • Ethical & Methodological Frameworks

    Developing responsible approaches to documentary film and digital storytelling in health and wellness research, with attention to facilitation, consent, power, care, and story ownership.

  • Story-Based Education & Knowledge Translation

    Exploring how digital stories, documentary films, curated story libraries, and educational tools can influence learning, reflection, attitudes, and practice.

  • Community-Engaged & Advocacy Storytelling

    Examining how story-based media can support community voice, public understanding, advocacy, and systems-level conversations about care.

  • Storytelling with Therapeutic Intent

    Studying how storytelling processes and facilitated screenings may support meaning-making, resilience, connection, grief work, and wellbeing.

Learn More about our Current Projects