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Graduate admissions

Child, Youth, Family and Community Studies (PhD)

The focus of this program is preparing you to play key leadership roles at provincial, national, and international levels in the broad field of Child and Youth Care.

Through research and knowledge development, and with a particular emphasis on the scholarship of practice, graduates will influence teaching, research, policy, practice, program development, and evaluation. Your final project will be a doctoral dissertation.

This program is offered primarily online. There is a mandatory two-week on-campus seminar held in the fall term of the first year.

Expected length Project or thesis Course-based
5 years Yes No

Quick facts

Program options:
Doctorate
Study options:
Full-time study
Program delivery:
Blended
Dynamic learning:
Co-op optional, Other: Required internship

Outcomes

Graduates of the PhD in Child, Youth, Family and Community Studies will have the skills and knowledge to:

Uphold decolonial ethics

  • Develop responsive scholarship that contributes to the wellbeing, resurgence, and self-determination of Indigenous nations globally, while also prioritizing the responsibilities to local First Peoples. Graduates will develop scholarship that addresses historical and ongoing forms of exclusion based on intersecting identities, including race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and citizenship.

Engage in interdisciplinary knowledge production

  • Advance decolonial, critical, and justice-oriented approaches to interdisciplinary knowledge production in diverse local, national, and global contexts to promote the well-being of children, youth, families, and communities.

Apply critical theory and scholarship

  • Demonstrate a deep understanding and application of critical concepts and theoretical frameworks across disciplines, including critical child, youth and family studies, gender studies, critical disability studies, critical race theory, intersectionality, and Indigenous studiesgraduates will mobilize and advance ethical, strengths-based, and relational approaches to inform practice, research, and policy related to children, youth, families, and communities.

Demonstrate change-driven leadership

  • Develop and implement responsive and collaborative skills in scholarship, advocacy, and systems-level change, preparing for leadership roles in diverse human service sectors that serve children, youth, and families, including organizations, government, private, not-for-profit, community, post-secondary education, and academia.

Promote knowledge mobilization for social impact

  • Advance innovation in the application and translation of diverse research methodologies and knowledge mobilization approaches that reflect multiple contexts, communities, and research paradigmsgraduates will promote actionable knowledge transfer through the integration of research, policy, and practice.

Find a supervisor

PhD students must have a faculty member who serves as their academic supervisor. When you apply:

  • you must list a potential supervisor on your application
  • this faculty member must agree to be your supervisor and recommend your admission
  • include an email from your supervisor with your application

To find a supervisor, review the faculty contacts. When you’ve found a faculty member whose research complements your own, contact them by email.

Alison Gerlach

Associate Professor Advancing equity-oriented policy, organizational, practice changes in early years and childhood dis/ability sectors so they are inclusive of and responsive to structurally marginalized communities, families and children. Principle-based and relational approaches including cultural safety and trauma- and violence-informed care. Critical, relational, and intersectional theorizing, mixed methods; community-engaged and participatory research.

Doris Kakuru

Professor, Graduate Advisor Violence against children and youth, Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, African girlhoods, the social context of education, Children in marginalized urban spaces, , Young refugees, and African diasporic ethnographies.

Accepting graduate students

Jeff Smith

Assistant Teaching Professor music therapy and expressive therapies; research-creation; arts-based autoethnography; addictions, harm reduction, and recovery; mental health and well-being; Indigenous education and decolonial pedagogies; critical psychology/post structural counselling approaches; currere; discourse analysis; radical youthwork and youth wellness activities

Jennifer H. White

Professor Youth suicide prevention; ethics; discourses of professionalism; constructionist methodologies; collaborative research; narrative practices; professional development; praxis-oriented pedagogy

Accepting graduate students

Jin-Sun Yoon

Teaching Professor Critical identity development, racial literacy, racialized settler–Indigenous relations, JEDI training (Justice, Equity, Decolonization, Intersectionality), decolonizing praxis in health and education

LJ Slovin

Assistant Professor Queer and trans youth, ethnography, sexual health education, popular culture, qualitative methodologies

Accepting graduate students

Mandeep Kaur Mucina

Director, Professor

Morgan Mowatt

Assistant Professor Indigenous sovereignty, law, authority Indigenous rights and governance Community-building, mutual aid, liberation Non-reformist reform

Accepting graduate students

Nicholas XEMŦOLTW̱ Claxton

Assistant Professor

Accepting graduate students

Samantha Corrington

Assistant Teaching Professor teaching practice skills on-line, relational pedagogy, family counselling and work, decolonization and social justice in the practice space from settler social location, narrative and relational practice.

Sandrina Carere

Professor Participatory, action-oriented, arts-based research and practice, Child-, youth- and community-led research and practice, Intersectional, anti-colonial, land-based frameworks, Critical girlhood, youth and feminist studies, Child welfare, foster care, kinship care

Shanne McCaffrey

Teaching Professor Land and Water based learning, teaching, and interconnectedness, Child Welfare, colonialism as a shared experience, environmental nurturing, preservation and activism, and sharing the land with non-human relatives.

Shemine Gulamhusein

Assistant Professor exploring Muslim migration stories of belonging and identity; lived experiences of marginalized and minoritized people and communities; therapeutic recreational practices in community spaces; outdoor and solution-focused therapies; global perspectives of child, youth, family, and community research and practices; (auto)ethnographic methods; narrative inquiry; and community-arts-based methodologies.

Accepting graduate students

Program details

Providing you accurate admission requirements, application deadlines, tuition fee estimates and scholarships depends on your situation. Tell us about yourself:

Program details

This information assumes you are . If this is incorrect, please update your information.

Application deadlines

September entry – apply by November 30

All supporting documentation, including references, must be received by November 30.

September entry – apply by December 15

All supporting documentation, including references, must be received by December 15.

Admission requirements

Program specific requirements

CYFCS application form

Download the application form

  • your responses should fit within the word count noted in the answer fields
    • the selection committe will not review responses that go beyond the word count or are sent as attachments/addendums
  • once completed, upload this form to the Statement of Intent field in the online UVic application portal

Two professional references

Sample of academic writing

  • you must be the sole author
  • your sample should demonstrate graduate-level writing capacity, usually your Master's thesis or research project

Other documents

  • current and complete curriculum vitae (CV)
  • GRE scores, if available (not required)

Program specific requirements

CYFCS application form

Download the application form

  • your responses should fit within the word count noted in the answer fields
    • the selection committe will not review responses that go beyond the word count or are sent as attachments/addendums
  • once completed, upload this form to the Statement of Intent field in the online UVic application portal

Two professional references

Sample of academic writing

  • you must be the sole author
  • your sample should demonstrate graduate-level writing capacity, usually your Master's thesis or research project

Other documents

  • current and complete curriculum vitae (CV)
  • GRE scores, if available (not required)

Completion requirements

View the minimum course requirements for this program.

View the minimum course requirements for this program.

Funding & aid

Tuition & fees

Estimated minimum program cost*

* Based on an average program length. For a per term fee breakdown view the tuition fee estimator.

Estimated values determined by the tuition fee estimator shall not be binding to the University of Victoria.

Ready to apply?

You can start your online application to UVic by creating a new profile or using an existing one.

Apply now    How to apply

Faculties & departments

Need help?

Contact Caroline Green at greenc@uvic.ca

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