My research interests include immigrant and refugee families and their process of acculturation as family units. I am also interested in studying issues of grief, ambiguous losses, war and torture, the development and maintenance of transnational relationships, and the impact of these on parenting practices, and mental health.

Specifically, the context in which families settle and its impact on “successful” or “non-successful” acculturation is a focus of my studies. My theoretical standpoint is a liberationist perspective with strong commitment to social justice and human right issues.

Works across the disciplines of Mad Studies, Critical Disability Studies, gender/feminist studies, social work, ethics, and education, and in the context of social movements, community organizing, peer work, and service user-led research.

They are interested in recognizing and redressing forms of epistemological, ontological, and affective violence and associated harms (e.g., disqualification of the knowledges and personhood of those from equity-seeking groups, and related emotional repercussions like loneliness, lost expectations of being treated as they deserve, etc.) often unattended to by conventional institutional approaches to rights protection, inclusion, or procedural justice.

Recent research projects have involved archival work into local histories of disabled student organizing and disabled students in social work education, arts-based zine-creation with Mad and disabled students to inform postsecondary approaches to ‘mental health’ and accessibility, critical interpretive synthesis of the epistemological and ethical complexities of teaching with Mad people’s autobiographical narratives, and a scoping review of power relations in service user partnerships with healthcare providers.

Gary is interested in child welfare/child protection policy and practice. He is particularly interested in child welfare service users’ knowledge and theory, and anti-oppressive perspectives. Gary’s focus on child welfare emerges from twelve years child protection practice and management experience.

He currently has an ongoing research project, with ethics approval, geared for graduate students to work on as their MSW thesis. This study examines service users’ views of what workers have done to help them. MSW students can adapt this study to focus on the service users of their choice and also adapt the ways the study conceptualizes ‘help’.

My research is at the intersection of pedagogy and the family; I pose the questions of how do we learn to do family and what can the family teach us? Related to this, I’m interested in understanding how and why the family endures as an institution of concern in critical social work education. My theoretical framework is influenced by psychoanalysis, queer theory, and Black feminist decolonial theories.

These frameworks all advocate for formlessness, or a grappling with the idea that justice work can be harmful as it imposes certain ‘forms’ on individuals. I’m interested in what becomes possible when we navigate this tension. Previously, I’ve done research related to Critical Muslim Studies (Islamophobia studies) and sexual violence resistance education.

Bonnie’s research focuses on a number of areas, such as the identification of social justice issues faced by Indigenous peoples, particularly the resilience of youth that are influenced in finding balance between Indigenous ways of knowing and Eurocentric realities through health, well-being, social and political processes. She is currently involved in examining reconciliation, decolonization and re-building alliances and friendships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants through a community initiative known as the Two Row Canoe Paddle on the Grand River.

Bonnie is also involved with the Six Nations community with research and the development of culturally specific program evaluation to benefit the Six Nations Social Services and Child Welfare. She has also been involved with many Indigenous journeys (horseback, walking & canoeing) over the years learning from varying Indigenous communities about research perspectives and methodologies as a way of engaging and understanding Indigenous epistemology with the land and the natural environment. These journeys also have led to Bonnie’s interest with equine and animal-assisted interventions.

My research interests center primarily around questions related to disability, inclusion/exclusion, space & place, (self)advocacy, representation, and citizenship, in and across communities, practice and policy. Recent and current work includes working with people labelled/with intellectual or other disabilities on experiences of masculinity and understandings of and inclusion/exclusion in feminist activism; sex and sexuality experiences and aspirations of people labelled with/intellectual disabilities; the intersection of intellectual disability with education, employment and experiences of homelessness; disability and masculinity; and an inclusive project being carried out with survivors of Ontario’s (now closed) large scale institutions.

I am also very interested in community-based research and partnerships. Related projects are engaging disabled people and community service providers in collaborative work to address systemic disjunctures leading to homelessness; sex and sexualities discrimination; and creation of self-advocacy/activist research networks to work towards change. Drawing on participatory action and inclusive research methodologies, my research also explores how arts-informed methodologies can facilitate inclusion in research and knowledge co-production and dissemination. For example, co-produced theatre, documentary film-making and photographic exhibits, found poetry, as well as academic and other types of writing with community members.

My research focuses on reproductive and maternal justice and barriers to care for women who experience marginalization along multiple axis of identity and across the lifespan and a focus on discourses of risk and surveillance within these contexts. My research has centered on people who are pregnant, lactating and parenting and who live with HIV and on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure.

Currently, I am doing research with and for pregnant and lactating individuals who consume cannabis and with older women who consume cannabis. I am concerned with ensuring that my research is conducted in alignment with the communities’ needs and priorities, and that knowledge mobilization and social change efforts are embedded in the research process.

I am also interested in taking up questions regarding the ethical and methodological tensions in participatory action research and with research that uses visual methods of inquiry. Recent projects include Wading Through the Weeds: A Public Health Response to Supporting Pregnant and Breast/Chestfeeding people who consume cannabis and Women Growing Older.

Originally from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation (Anishinaabe), Jackson explores lived experience among Indigenous peoples living with HIV and AIDS (IPHAs) using Indigenous knowledge, perspectives and values. His research has explored diverse topics, including for example, experiences of depression, resilience, and leadership. Through research I’m involved in, I am particularly interested in ways Indigenous knowledges move us beyond critiques of colonization towards ways research can reflect tribal wisdom.

I am interested in working with contributions from the perspectives of critical mental health, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and critical disability studies, to study the historical production of ideas about difference, normalcy, sexuality, eugenics, race, ability and mental “illness” as they cohere, diverge, interdepend and perform within policy, law and practice.

My projects have looked at issues of social justice, violence, ethics, confluence, historiography and social work using complimentary theoretical and methodological frameworks to engage respectfully with the complexities of our human condition. I come to this work with over a decade of experience in the mental health field, in supportive housing, settlement, crisis respite, forensic assertive community treatment, community-based early intervention, and governance settings.

My current research focus on two primary themes:

1. Social work professional identity and work-life, and the use of digital media as a space for social workers critical reflexivity
2. Digital literacy in communities with an emphasis on older adults.

This work has included considerations of the effects of neo-liberalism and austerity on social workers’ capacity to actualize social justice and social change goals; the intersection of social work, digital technology and professionalization; social workers use of digital storytelling; multi-modal analysis of social work critical reflexivity through digital narratives; YouTube as an open access archive for social work leadership artifacts; and the use of digital narratives for client self-advocacy as well as older adults digital engagement in the arts; older adults use of public library digital literacy programs; best practices in library and community digital literacy program development.

I am currently the PI on 3 active SSHRC funded projects: The Art of Working Together (PEG); Behind Closed Doors: Understanding the use of Sousveillance in Mandate Social Welfare Interventions (IDG); and the Understanding Social Work Leadership in Canada Oral History Project (IG).

My research focuses on systemic oppression and addressing social inequalities through a critical race feminist, anti-colonial framework, and multi-method approaches. My research interests revolve around social justice work with communities that are systemically discriminated against, including Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities, racialized migrants and forcibly displaced people, children and families involved with child welfare, 2SLGBTQIA+ people and the intersections among these positionalities. Specifically, my research and practice involve addressing the trauma of racialized communities through a community-engaged model that connects healing and political agency.

I focus on these interrelated areas:

1. Systemic discrimination towards First Nations and racialized migrants through child welfare and migration systems.
2. Community-led, anti-colonial, and anti-racist responses to systemic discrimination, including critical statistics, creative and participatory methods, nature-based approaches, and solidarity organizing among scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists.

I am interested in people’s experiences of serious illness and their interactions with care systems, and how health professionals sustain ethical practice in contemporary care contexts. My research explores how people’s illness and care experiences are shaped by (and shape) their social identities. I am also interested in how service users and their stories enter into social and health service agencies and institutional processes, with all the tensions around representation, responsibility, choice and expertise this involves.

I have a particular focus on calls for people to ‘be involved’ in their own healthcare and how this can sometimes contradict our aspirations for equity and ethical practice. A second research theme explores links between social (justice) work and the arts (visual art, theatre, poetry, etc.).

My research is focused on gender-specific housing and homelessness, women (inclusive of cis/trans) and non-binary people who use drugs and reproductive health/ reproductive justice. I ground my work in an intersectional feminist analysis and use participatory and arts-based methods as a way to involve the perspectives of communities who traditionally are excluded from research processes.

I am interested in research that is community based, aligned with community need and committed to the equitable involvement of community members in research processes. Most importantly, I am committed to research projects that are orientated towards making tangible social change.

Janice Chaplin: Associate Professor & Faculty Field Coordinator

Research interests include: Social Work Field Education; Social Work Practice in Health Care; Interdisciplinary Practice; Social Work Practice with Individuals, Couples and Families; Pedagogy-Integration of Theory and Practice; Ethics and Values, and Supervision.

Jennie Vengris: Associate Professor & Field Education Development (Research Leave January 1-April 30, 2024)

My research experience and interests revolve primarily around housing and homelessness – especially the complex intersection of personal and structural risk and protective factors in individuals’ and communities’ experiences of homelessness. I am interested in advocacy efforts that demand comprehensive housing policies and am interested in how to meaningfully incorporate an equity analysis in housing policy. Finally, I am interested in community food security – especially how communities participate in responding to poverty-related hunger and how community food security can exist without undermining the need for policy/structural solutions.