Our faculty

Mandeep Kaur Mucina

Acting Director
School of Child and Youth Care

Research interests: family violence, gender-based violence, understanding the role of trauma in migration, and exploring second-generation immigrant youth’s stories of resistance, identity, and encounters with racism in the diaspora, all from a feminist anti-racist, anti-colonial lens.

Jessica Ball

Professor
School of Child and Youth Care

Research interests: Dr. Ball’s research interests include (but are not limited to): forced migration, refugee reintegration and resettlement, cultural ecologies of child development, identity documentation and family life in contexts of transnational labour migration, program evaluation, Indigenous early childhood development and early learning, Indigenous fatherhood, child and youth service workforce and policy development, speech and language development, arts-based and other qualitative research methods, and  community-engaged scholarship.

Study Leave
Sandrina Carere

Professor
School of Child and Youth Care, Faculty of Human and Social Development

Research Interests: 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

Kristen Cheney

Director / Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research areas: orphans/orphanhood, intercountry adoption, child institutionalization, youth with lived experience of care; humanitarianism, international child protection regimes, political economy of childhood and international development; adolescent/youth sexual and reproductive health and rights, children and assisted reproductive technologies; decolonizing and participatory research methods
On Leave
Office: HSD B102b
Nicholas XEMŦOLTW̱  Claxton

Assistant Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research interests: Indigenous Education, Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Research Methodologies, Indigenous Governance, Indigenous Resurgence, Land-Based Learning, Experiential Learning; Community Engaged Research
Office: HSD B140
Samantha  Corrington

Assistant Teaching Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Office: HSD B132
Alison Gerlach

Assistant Professor
School of Child and Youth Care

Research Interests: 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.

Shemine Gulamhusein

Assistant Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research interests: 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.
Doris Kakuru

Associate Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
My research interests include: Violence in childhood with a focus on sexual violence in schools; Girlhood and gendered children’s rights; Adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights; Children and youth in urban poverty; Social context of education and child labour.
Office: B130
Farah Mawani

Assistant Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research interests and supervision fields: Lived experience, community-led, community-embedded, trauma-informed, and decolonizing research approaches; knowledge synthesis; interdisciplinary quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research; implementation science; social and mental health inequities; macro-, community-, and family-level social determinants of mental health and well-being; systemic racism and discrimination as trauma; community responses to systemic racism and discrimination; migration and mental health; work environments and mental health; green space/blue space and mental health; walking peer support groups; intergenerational programs.
Shanne McCaffrey

Teaching Professor
School of Child and Youth Care

Interests include:  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.

Bryan Silverman

Assistant Teaching Professor, Graduate Advisor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research Interests: Social context of education; multiculturalism; identity;
Jennifer H. White

Professor
School of Child and Youth Care

Research interests: Youth suicide prevention; ethics; discourses of professionalism; constructionist methodologies; collaborative research; narrative practices; professional development; praxis; pedagogy

Jin-Sun Yoon

Teaching Professor
School of Child and Youth Care
Research interests: intersectional diversity training, cultural identity development, racialized settler/Indigenous relations.
On Leave