Faculty & staff
Office
General enquiries
Email: socw@uvic.ca
Phone: 250-721-8036
Office hours
- Monday to Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Thursday and Friday: CLOSED
Courier address
School of Social Work
University of Victoria
Human and Social Development building, room B302
3800 Finnerty Road
Victoria BC V8P 5C2
Physical address
School of Social Work
University of Victoria
Human and Social Development building, room B302
PO Box 1700 STN CSC
Victoria BC V8W 2Y2
Faculty
Director & Associate Teaching Professor School of Social Work
Office: HSD B302 swdirect@uvic.ca 250-472-4129
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Social work education, field education and participatory research
Associate Professor School of Social Work
Research interests:
- Indigenous health and well-being (particularly Indigenous women's and Two-Spirit health)
- Indigenous research methods
- health and healing in the context of child welfare involvement
- Indigenous midwifery and birthing.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Indigenous health and well-being
Assistant Teaching Professor School of Social Work
Cheryl is from the Gitxsan Nation. Gutginuxw (Owl) House and the Gisgaast (Fireweed) Clan. She holds a BSW and MSW, and a PhD from the Social Dimensions of Health program at the University of Victoria. Her PhD research focussed on Indigenous Elder healthcare and dementia care. Cheryl is honored and grateful to teach as a visitor on the traditional territories of the Songhees, Esquimalt and WS’ANEC’ peoples.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Indigenous health and well-being
Status: On study leave
Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Gwendolyn Gosek is a member of Lac La Ronge First Nations in Saskatchewan and has Cree/Dene and Norwegian ancestry. Dr. Gosek is honored to be a visitor to the unceded Territories of the Songhees, Esquimalt and WS'ANEC' peoples. Her community work centered around crisis intervention, working with Indigenous youth as well as women and children seeking shelter. She holds a BA in political studies, along with a BSW and MSW from the University of Manitoba and a PhD from the University of Victoria.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Indigenous child welfare services
Executive Director of IACE; Associate Professor School of Social Work
Indigenous youth are over-represented in BC's child welfare system and under-represented in BC post-secondary institutions.
Kundoqk, Dr. Jacquie Green, associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria, is setting out to change that. She is committed to growing the Indigenous space at the university and beyond.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Indigenous child welfare policy and practice
Graduate Advisor (MSW); Associate Professor School of Social Work
Research interests:
- African Caribbean immigration, family building, and healing
- Decolonizing approaches to research and pedagogy
- Social work history/ies
- Area(s) of expertise:
- African Caribbean immigration, family building, and healing
Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Accepting graduate students
Zaheera's interdisciplinary scholarship is informed by decolonial, global south and intersectional theories and practice. Over the last decade she has taught at the African Centre for Migration and Society, Wits University (South Africa) where she remains a research associate, the University of Alberta, and in the European Masters in Migration and Intercultural Relations program at the University of Oldenburg (Germany).
Her scholarship is centred on migration studies, especially in, from and around Africa, an emerging area of work is in Islamophobia.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Islamophobia, Migration, and Southern African studies
Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Amanda LaVallee is a Red River Métis born and raised in Alberta and Saskatchewan in places such as Edmonton, Speers, North Battleford, and Saskatoon. She spent much of her childhood keenly attuned to the prairie landscape through the activities of hunting, trapping, fishing, gathering, and gardening. She holds a Bachelor degree of Indigenous Social Work from the First Nations University of Canada (2001), a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Regina (2006), and a PHD (2014) and Post Doctoral Fellowship (2018) in the department of Community Health and Epidemiology from the University of Saskatchewan. Her past research projects examined the health, well-being, and identity of Métis people, specifically their engagement within social systems and their impact on relationships. Currently, Dr. LaVallee holds a SSHRC Race, Gender, and Diversity Initiative Grant for her project titled, Indigenous Specific Racism in the Academy: Research towards Action Oriented Change.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Métis identity, culture, health and wellbeing, Indigenous Research Methods and Ethics, Indigenous Specific Racism
Associate Teaching Professor School of Social Work
Tracey has been teaching in the UVic School of Social Work since 2006. She completed her PhD at McGill University. Her teaching and research interests include critical, anti-oppressive and decolonizing practice and pedagogy; SOTL- scholarship of teaching and learning; expressive arts and social justice; mindfulness and contemplative practice and pedagogy; social work field education; arts-related qualitative research; and critical hermeneutic phenomenology.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Critical, anti-oppressive and decolonizing practice and pedagogy; SOTL- scholarship of teaching and learning; expressive arts and social justice; mindfulness and contemplative practice and pedagogy; social work field education; arts-related qualitative research; and critical hermeneutic phenomenology
Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Mehmoona Moosa-Mitha has worked for many years with children and their families, particularly in inner city, poor areas populated with people from visible minority communities. Her research interests include anti-oppressive practice and teaching; children's rights; child welfare practice and policy.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Citizenship rights of children and marginalized communities
BSW Chair; Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Jenny Morgan is from the Gitxsan Nation. Lax Gibuu (Wolf clan) from the House of Hawaaw. She joined the UVic School of Social Work in 2021. She is currently a member of the BC Minister’s Advisory Council on Indigenous Women and the National Indigenous Leadership Circle in Research. Her practice experience includes over two decades working directly with community in employment and health services, as well as leadership work with housing organizations and within health authorities. Dr. Morgan's latest role was with the BC Women's and Children's Hospitals as the inaugural Director for Indigenous Health. She holds a BSW (2003, UBC), an MSW with an Indigenous Specialization (UVic, 2014), and a Doctorate in Education (2019, UWO). Her research and teaching interests include addressing anti-Indigenous specific racism, Indigenous Health, and Evaluation.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Anti-Indigenous racism, Indigenous health, evaluation
Associate Teaching Professor School of Social Work
Jennifer's scholarship, social work practice and teaching pedagogy are rooted in relationality. By relationality, she means that she is a human being in an interdependent relationship with other people, all living things including the land and past and future generations, and with knowledge. Her areas of interest and knowledge specialization include: child welfare practice and policy; decolonizing and anti-oppressive practices and pedagogies; community-based participatory research; Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies; program evaluation; and social work field education. Jennifer has worked with child welfare systems in Canada and the United States since 2005. Prior to her work in child welfare, Jennifer engaged in community-based social justice work in the UK and the United States.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Child welfare practice and policy
Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Ramsundarsingh's research mixes her background in business and social policy with her personal journey. One focus is on understanding how the management of human service organizations contributes to service user experiences of oppression with the goal of creating truly anti-oppressive organizations. A second focus is understanding beliefs about and practices relating to healing from spiritual and cultural groups to explore how they can be integrated into social work practice. Beginning with her personal practice of integrating Vedanta into her own practice. Other research areas include anti-oppressive practice, nonprofit management, social policy advocacy, community led practice, Vedanta and social work practice, culturally based approaches to mental health.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Social policy, community development
Associate Teaching Professor School of Social Work
Gaben’s work experience includes over twenty years working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer people and immigrants in various community settings in the United States. He has many years of teaching experience at the University of Utah in the U.S. and his philosophical framework includes poststructuralism, critical theory, and post-colonialism. He pursues to implement anti-racist and inclusive classroom that examines and challenges academia’s over reliance on Western, European, and North American ways of knowing.
gabensanchez@uvic.ca 250-853-3209
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Poststructural practice and narrative practice, 2SLGBTQ+, Immigration, Impact of structural oppression, Transnational Social Work, Anti-racism and anti-racist Social Work education
Qwul'sih'yah'maht Robina Thomas
Professor School of Social Work
Qwul'sih'yah'maht, Dr. Robina Thomas is Lyackson of the Coast Salish Nation. She holds a BSW, MSW, and a PhD in Indigenous Governance.
Robina is committed to Indigenous education and her research interests include storytelling, residential schools and Uy'skwuluwun: on being Indigenous. She is dedicated to understanding anti-racism and anti-oppression and how these can be 'lived'.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Residential schools; social work education and storytelling
Professor School of Social Work
I am a Professor at University of Victoria’s School of Social Work and a Scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). I work as an engaged researcher in social work, bringing a health equity and social justice lens to this work. My work has engaged with inner city health and harm reduction as well as oral health and community dental clinics. In this work, I have collaborated with consumer-led agencies and advocacy groups focused on poverty, homelessness, mental health, substance use, and harm reduction. I am indebted to the leadership of individuals with experiential knowledge and peer-led organizations who have included me in these movements in the shared struggle for social justice.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Substance use, harm reduction, health equity
Professor School of Social Work
Dr. Yi anchors her social work actions and activities on story. As a former Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Graduate Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, she has worked with and for people who are touched by cancer. She uses imagery, art, metaphor, and story in research based on decolonial and post-structural frameworks. She has been working transnationally and plans to enhance her transnational work further in the future. As the first cohort of Social Work Health Futures Lab, she is interested in capturing signals about the futures, forecasting, and creating a future together in the community. She is vigorously writing a new social work textbook on human development from decolonial perspectives, which is scheduled to be published in 2025.
- Area(s) of expertise:
- Epistemology, visual images and narratives, LGBTQ+, immigration, emerging adults, Participatory Action Research, cancer survivorship, vicarious traumas, grief/loss, disabilities, post-traumatic growth
Staff
Donna Barker
Assistant to the Director & Office Manager School of Social Work
Office: HSD B302 dbarker@uvic.ca 250-472-5072
Lucas Baird
BSW Admissions & Academic Support Coordinator School of Social Work
Saeed Sheshehgar
MSW Admissions & Academic Support Coordinator School of Social Work
Adjunct & emeritus faculty
- Lena Dominelli, Adjunct Professor
BA (Simon Fraser), MA, PhD (Sussex) - Deborah Rutman, Adjunct Associate Professor
BSc (University of Toronto), MA (University of Toronto), PhD (University of Toronto)
- Andrew Armitage
BSc (London), BA (Canterbury), MSW (British Columbia), PhD (Bristol), Professor Emeritus - Leslie Brown
PhD (University of Victoria) - Marilyn Callahan
BA, BSW, MSW (British Columbia), PhD (Bristol), Professor Emerita - Jeannine Carriere
BA (U of Alberta), BSW (U of Manitoba), MSW (UBC), PhD (U of Alberta), Professor Emerita - John Cossom
BA (Western Ontario), BSW, MSW (Toronto), Associate Professor Emeritus - Andrew Farquharson
BA (Bishop’s), MSW (McGill), MEd, EdD (Toronto), Professor Emeritus - Yvonne Haist
ECE Diploma (Capilano College), BSW (University of Victoria), AdEd Diploma (UBC), M.Ed (University of Victoria), SEP (Counselling Psychology), Somatic Transformation Practitioner, Assistant Teaching Professor Emerita - Cindy Holmes
BA (U 0f Waterloo), MA (U of Toronto), PhD (UBC), Associate Professor Emerita - Donna Jeffery
BSc, BSW (U of Calgary), MA, PhD (U of Toronto), Professor Emerita - Patricia MacKenzie
MSW (UBC), PhD (U of Edinburgh), Associate Professor Emerita - Pamela Miller
BA (Maryhurst), MSW, PhD “Philosophy” (Indiana), PhD “Social Work” (Ohio), Professor Emerita - Cheryl Moir-van Iersel
BA (Calgary), MSW (UBC), Assistant Teaching Professor Emerita - Susan Strega
BSW (UM), MSW (UVic), PhD (U of Southampton), Professor Emerita - David Turner
LLB (Sheffield), DipSW and Admin (Oxford), Associate Professor Emeritus - Barbara Whittington
BA, MSW (UBC), Associate Professor Emerita
- Dr. Elias Cheboud
BSW, MSW, PhD (Victoria), Professor Emeritus - Marjorie D. Martin
BA, BSW, MSW (British Columbia), Associate Professor Emerita - Roberta Taylor
BSW, MSW (Victoria), Senior Instructor Emerita - Dr. Brian Wharf
BA, BSW, MSW, PhD (Brandeis), Professor Emeritus
Sessional instructors
Sessional instructors are members of CUPE local 4163.
Email: mbochar@uvic.ca
Marina (she/her) grew up on Treaty 6 territory (Edmonton) and is of Romanian, Polish, and Ukrainian ancestry. She is a fourth-generation settler currently living out her great-grandparents’ settlement on Turtle Island, on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples in Northern BC. Marina completed a Master of Social Work at UVic in 2021 and has 10 years of experience in the social services field, where she worked closely with youth experiencing sexual exploitation, sex workers, and individuals impacted by gender-based violence.
Marina currently serves as a Clinical Manager with the First Nations Health Authority at a new First Nations Primary Care Centre in Hazelton, BC. She is deeply passionate about harm reduction and committed to providing health care that is culturally safe, and community-based. In particular, she is dedicated to supporting First Nations communities in remote northern regions by ensuring services are accessible, respectful, and rooted in cultural safety.
In her spare time, Marina enjoys walking along the river with her two rescue pups, Juniper and Lilah, or spending time at the gym powerlifting.
Email: fairbair@uvic.ca
Michele joined the school as a Sessional Lecturer in 2009. She teaches in both the BSW and MSW programs. Her teaching and research interests include: decolonial and antiracist policy and social work practice, research methodologies, social work identity; and the application of colonial and neoliberal governmentality, queer, Indigenous, critical race, and feminist theories.
Michele has completed narrative research with child welfare social workers who were in state care as children or were investigated as mothers. Her current research is a poststructuralist analysis of social work legal regulatory reforms in settler colonial nation-states.
Email: kimg@uvic.ca
Kim accepts academic reference requests from previous students who have taken a course with her.
Email: jodih@uvic.ca
Jodi accepts academic, employment and RSW registration reference requests from previous students who have taken a course with he
Email: sharnelleleigh@uvic.ca
Email: tkelsall@uvic.ca
Tyson Singh joined the UVic School of Social Work in 2021 as a sessional lecturer. He otherwise works in Vancouver's DTES as an outreach and case managing social worker for Vancouver Coastal Health.
His social work-related interests are broad but include examining how biopolitics exclude people from dignified social services, healthcare and housing; police accountability; harm reduction and limitations of the state; as well as anti-racism and grounding social work practice in an anti-colonial worldview.
Email: vkey@uvic.ca
Vanessa (she/her) identifies as a biracial cisgender woman, who is a settler on the lands of Treaty 8 territory and the traditional homelands of the Cree, Dane-Zaa, Saulteau, Sikanni and Slavey First Nations. Vanessa works to re-imagine a social work practice rooted in critical reflexivity, anti-oppressive practice, and decolonial practice. Her practice is founded on intersectionality and anti-oppressive practice, as inspired by positioning and accountability to the past-present-future. Currently, Vanessa supports communities through private practice. She has been studying decolonizing social work practices since 2010 and continues this learning journey currently through graduate study in Art Therapy.
Email: jlavalley@uvic.ca
Jen (she/her) is a Two-Spirit/queer, nêhiyaw-Saulteaux Métis scholar from Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan and a registered member of Piapot First Nation. She is currently living on the lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Peoples, including the Songhees and Xʷsepsəm (Esquimalt) Nations. Jennifer completed her PhD in early 2025 and has over 15 years of experience of front-line social work practice where she has worked closely with youth involved with the criminal (in)justice system, sex workers, and people who use drugs. Her research focuses on substance use, harm reduction, resurgence, and Indigenous and decolonial methodologies. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, she is working with Indigenous Peoples who use illicit drugs to co-create culturally safe drug checking practices and technologies. Outside of work, she can often be found adventuring with her dog, Goose, sitting on a beach, or reading.
Email: pmach@uvic.ca
Phil Mach is a Registered Clinical Social Worker who practices on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ nations. He current works within Island Health as a Manager of Professional Practice, where he supports professional regulation and standards, policy creation, governance, and strategic initiatives. He also serves as the President for the BC Association of Social Workers, and provides counselling and psychotherapy in private practice. His areas of practice include health profession regulation, policy analysis, mental health and substance use, social work leadership, and supporting those who have experienced trauma.
- SOCW312B: Anti-Racist Social Work (Fall 2025)
- SOCW356: Global Approaches to Human Development and Social Justice (Fall 2023)
Email: alyxm@uvic.ca
Alyx (they/them) is a trans-masculine queer person of Gaelic Scottish, Irish, and British ancestry. In community, they work with and alongside trans children and their families through community-based programs and a counselling practice. Their practice and teaching approaches are inspired by trans studies, transformative justice, decarceral politics, grassroots activism.
In the classroom, they invite somatic awareness and nature-based learning to get curious about decolonial and relational approaches to social work practice. They have taught courses in Social Work, Child and Youth Care and Gender Studies at UVic. They have been a Field Lisaison Instructor and are teaching SOCW 312A in the Fall of 2025.
Email: km28@uvic.ca
Email: michelemorin@uvic.ca
Michele is a Métis woman—daughter, mother, sister, auntie, cousin, friend, and scholar. She is a proud member of her Métis community and a traditional knowledge keeper. Michele practices Two World Walking and Two-Eyed Seeing, working diligently to balance a contemporary Métis lifestyle with Eurocentric academia. She is an Indigenous Social Work instructor at the University of Victoria’s School of Social Work and also teaches Indigenous Studies at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC. Her research interests are wide-ranging, but they share a common thread: the sharing of multiple knowledges, epistemologies, axiologies, and ontologies. Through this work, Michele aims to honour and advance decolonization through educational change.
Email: nalcaraz@uvic.ca
With a degree in Political Science, Nellie came to Canada from the Philippines under the federal live-in caregiver program. She has been a community organizer and a migrant rights advocate for more than a decade. She is a PhD candidate at McGill University’s School of Social Work. Her doctoral research looks at the experiences of non-status migrants in Canada. Nellie completed her Master of Social Work at the University of Calgary and her Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Victoria.
In 2021, Nellie received the John Hutton Memorial Award from the Alberta College of Social Workers and in 2019, she was given the Clarice Chodak Social Justice and Action Award by University of Calgary’s Faculty of Social Work. Since 2020, Nellie has been an appointed member of the City of Calgary's Anti-Racism Action Committee. Nellie has been a practicing social worker for more than a decade in the field of disability, child and family services with a particular focus in Indigenous population.
When not in the community or academic spaces, Nellie can be found scaling and hiking the mountains of Alberta to reconnect with herself and the natural world.
Email: toddo@shaw.ca
Email: trishpal@uvic.ca
Kîwetinohk Kîsik/Trish Pal (they/them) is a 2Spirit non-binary person of Red River Métis and mixed Euro-settler ancestry with an MSW-I. They currently reside at Amiskwaciywâskahikan, (Beaver Hills House, "Edmonton") in Treaty 6. Their scholarship focuses on connecting colonial violences including bodily violences and land-based violences. They work from a decolonial harm reduction lens, centering self-determination, consent, relationship, and accessibility. They have spent many years supporting survivors of many kinds of violence including Indigenous folks using illicit substances as the co-creator of the Indigenous Harm Reduction Team (ihrt.ca).
They teach SOCW 435 -Decolonial & Anti-Oppressive Perspectives on Mental Health and SOCW 471 - Substance Use Theory, Policy, and Practice in Social Work.
Email: snpiercy@uvic.ca
Sarina (she/her) is a mixed-race parent, educator, and nature-based counsellor with over 15 years of experience in Indigenous health and social policy research, reproductive justice, and land-based healing. She holds a Master of Social Work (Indigenous Specialization) from the University of Victoria (2017).
Her teaching is rooted in relational and decolonial pedagogies, with a focus on nurturing collaborative curiosity around the gifts we carry and those we aspire to develop. Whenever appropriate, she weaves in holistic practices to support students in cultivating a balanced, embodied learning experience.
In addition to her teaching role, Sarina offers nature-based counselling through her private practice, Shapeshift Counselling, and is an active member of a local mutual-aid BIPOC doula collective. A proud parent of two young children, Sarina finds joy in the messy, beautiful moments of gardening, hiking, and being on the land with her family.
She currently teaches SOCW 350A.
Email: leanneg@uvic.ca
Leanne is interested in decolonizing health care, health equity in addictions treatment, and the use of narrative therapy in supporting others.
Some of the courses she has taught include 200A & 200B: Introductions to Social Work and Social Policy; 311: Understanding Oppression; 312: Collaborative Conversations; 319: Research for Social Change; 400/532: Introduction to Social Work in Health care; 471: Addictions in Society; 512: Knowledge and Inquiry. Occasionally, she also takes students on for field education learning opportunities in the health authority.
Leanne enjoys creative writing, triathlon training and racing, and spending time with her two kids and her wonderful circle of friends.
Email: glent@uvic.ca
I've been a Lecturer here at UVic for many years in addition to a 30 year career in government in social policy and program development - at times acting as BC director of income assistance, employment and training and disaster response planning. In my early career, I was a child protection worker, a District Supervisor, Coordinator of BC's Income Assistance Appeal system, Minister's liaison to the cooperative community and an Ombudsman's Officer. Working at the School all these years has been the best job ever.
Courses taught
- 200B - Introduction to the Critical Analysis of Social Welfare in Canada
- 350A - Social Work, Social Justice and the Law
Email: christophertse@uvic.ca
Employment opportunities
Our staff, sessional lecturers and faculty are comprised of BIPOC and/or members of equity-seeking groups and/or allies to social justice work. We are proud to share that more than half our faculty have received awards and acknowledgements for their activism in social work education. It is a practice of our school in all our hiring to post all positions as a preferential and/or limited hire.
Faculty
There are no available faculty positions in the School of Social Work at this time.
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