Contributors

Lorry-Ann Austin is a sessional lecturer at Thompson Rivers University, where she teaches courses in social welfare, social work practice, and human development, as well as a clinical social worker with the Interior Health Authority. Prior to earning her MSW from the University of British Columbia, she worked for a decade as a television and radio news reporter based in Kamloops.

Jacques Caillouette is a professor in the School of Social Work at the Université de Sherbrooke, where his teaching focuses on community organization and social movements. His research interests include collaborative research methodologies, community development, interculturalism, and the political construction of an unified sense of regional identity. As a long-standing member of the Centre for Research on Social Innovations (Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales, CRISES), he is closely involved with the work of its Policy and Social Practices section, in particular.

Graham Day is emeritus reader in sociology at Bangor University, in Wales. A specialist in the sociology of Wales and in community and rural sociology, he is the author of Making Sense of Wales (2002), Theorizing Nationalism (with Andrew Thompson) (2004), and Community and Everyday Life (2006), among other publications. In addition to his academic research and writing, Day has been extensively involved with projects in rural development and participatory democracy. Along with colleagues at Bangor, he has been a participating member of EuroIdentities, a multinational EU research project that employs biographical narratives to study the evolution of European identity.

Robert Harding is an associate professor in the School of Social Work and Human Services at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia. After working in child welfare in Manitoba and Québec, he relocated to Aotearoa in 1989, where he served as a community development consultant and policy advisor in the public health system. Upon returning to Canada, he guided the University of the Fraser Valley in partnering with the Stó:lō Nation to develop an Indigenous social services diploma program based on traditional principles of healing and helping. His research, which has appeared in numerous publications, focuses on discourse about social policy, poverty, and Indigenous self-governance issues.

Wendy Hulko is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. She holds degrees in sociology and Spanish (BA), social work (MSW), and sociology and social policy (PhD) and has worked in the field of aging for over twenty years, in areas such as residential care nursing, hospital social work, and government policy. She conducts research on aging and health in collaboration with equity-seeking groups, including First Nation Elders, older women, queer youth, and rural residents, and has published widely. In 2016, Hulko was awarded the TRU Excellence in Scholarship Award in recognition of her research accomplishments.

Paul Jenkinson is a social worker and activist with extensive experience in the area of child welfare in British Columbia. His interest in systemic solutions to poverty issues in small-city contexts has been informed by the lived struggles of families, single mothers, the elderly, and those with addictions and mental health challenges. A registered social worker, he holds an MSW from the University of British Columbia and has been invited to lecture in social work programs throughout the province. He has also served on the board of the British Columbia Association of Social Workers and was for five years the chair of its Child Welfare and Family Committee.

Terry Kading is an associate professor of political science at Thompson Rivers University, where he teaches courses in Canadian politics, comparative politics, and local government. The editor of No Straight Lines: Local Leadership and the Path from Government to Governance in Small Cites (2018), he is also involved in several community-based research projects with a focus on social and economic challenges in the small city.

Sharnelle Matthew is the mental health clinician for six Secwepemc communities. She has worked as a counsellor in Secwepemc territory since 2001, serving Aboriginal people both on and off reserve. A registered social worker and a registered clinical counsellor, she holds an MSW from the University of British Columbia and was a sessional instructor at Thompson Rivers University from 2010 to 2013. She is from the Simpcw First Nation, where she has lived her whole life, and enjoys being connected with her family and community.

Kathie McKinnon has been the supervisor of the Wellness Team at Secwepemc Child and Family Services in Kamloops, BC, since 2008 and has taught social work as a sessional instructor at Thompson Rivers University since 2010, in addition to maintaining a private practice. A registered social worker and a registered clinical counsellor, she has an MSW from Memorial University and a PhD in psychology from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her dissertation, “Intertwining Hope, Strengths, and Resistance as Transformative: Women’s Verbal and Visual Narratives,” focuses on the stories and art created by nine co-inquirers and on how their conversations, deeply experiential and rich in meaning, illuminate the importance of storytelling in therapeutic practice and suggest new ways of relationally being-with in therapeutic space.

Jennifer Murphy is the former chair of the School of Social Work and Human Service at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. Her research interests include critical criminology, narrative analysis, and critical social work pedagogy. Her social work practice was mainly in the field of mediation, as a family justice counsellor, helping separated families to develop a parenting plan for their children. In her research, she employs qualitative methods to explore the reintegration of former prisoners into the community upon release from federal penitentiaries. Both her master’s and doctoral work involved interviewing men and women on parole to gain an understanding of the challenges they faced and how they navigated through a myriad of barriers towards reintegration, with her dissertation concerned, in particular, with desistance rather than recidivism.

Diane Purvey is dean of the Faculty of Arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in Surrey, BC. Her research focuses on alternatives to prescriptive norms, particularly in the context of institutions, including restorative justice practices in elementary schools and the history of deinstitutionalization of mental health clients in British Columbia. She is the co-author (with John Belshaw) of Vancouver Noir, 1930–1960 (2011) and of Private Grief, Public Mourning: The Rise of the Roadside Shrine in British Columbia (2009), as well as the co-editor (with Christopher Walmsley) of Child and Family Welfare in British Columbia: A History (2005). A longtime resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Purvey has worked at the Carnegie Community Centre, has volunteered with food banks, and has collaborated with residents’ associations to create more inclusive communities.

Mónica J. Sánchez-Flores is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC. She holds a PhD in sociology and a master’s degree in social and political theory, both from the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the social construction of the concept of race, the role of mindfulness and complex identities in equity, diversity, and inclusion training, the settlement experience of immigrants, as well as on sociological theory, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism. She has taught in a variety of disciplines (politics, sociology and social theory, literature, history) in Mexico, India, and Canada since 2000 and is the author of Political Philosophy for the Global Age (2005) and Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Expanding the Boundaries of the Individual (2010).

Christopher Walmsley is professor emeritus at Thompson Rivers University. He taught social work for over twenty-five years at Thompson Rivers University, the University of Manitoba, and the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Protecting Aboriginal Children (2005) and the co-editor (with Diane Purvey) of Child and Family Welfare in British Columbia: A History (2005). He has also published numerous articles and reports on fathers and child welfare. He lives in New Westminster, BC.

Sydney Weaver holds an MSW and a PhD in social work from the University of British Columbia and has worked in child welfare and addictions services for many years, in clinical practice as well as in policy analysis, research, and teaching. Her research focuses on the critical analysis of health and social services and policy in relation to substance-using marginalized peoples, with a view to improving outcomes for families. On the premise that social work should be transformative, she adopts an intersectional, decolonizing approach that aims to further social justice and has developed and conducted training for social workers in best practices with substance-using parents. She currently works with the Heatley Community Health Centre, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, as well as in private practice.