Ariel Little is a PhD Candidate specializing in transatlantic discourses of health and girlhood between 1870-1920. Her dissertation specifically addresses how hygienic health formed a significant model of girlhood in this period. Her work investigates how the discourse of hygienic girlhood served as a vehicle of feminist empowerment as well as a biopolitical tool used to shape hierarchies of race and class.

Her areas of research interest include the medical humanities, gender (particularly girlhood) studies, disability studies, and ecocriticism. In addition to her work on historic health manuals, she studies a variety of authors from this period, including Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery, Zitkala-Ša, Sui Sin Far, and George MacDonald. Her doctoral research was supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.