The vision of the Faculty of Social Work is to help create and contribute to a world where there are no great inequalities of wealth or income, where economic and political power is more evenly distributed, where human need is the central value of distribution of society’s resources, where diversity of culture is celebrated, where people have greater control over their own lives, and where all persons are afforded maximum opportunity to enrich their physical, spiritual, psychological, and intellectual well-being.  Being the only university-based social work program in Manitoba and the largest program in Canada, this vision also includes the Faculty playing a leading role in the socio-economic-cultural development of the Province in particular, but also to Canada and beyond, which is consistent with the University’s own vision statement. To these ends, it is necessary that the Faculty become one of the outstanding social work programs in Canada with respect to research, quality education, community service, and the accomplishments of its graduates.

Brenda Bacon 

Brenda Bacon researches in the areas of family violence; outcomes in criminal justice; and community mental health.

Michael Baffoe

Dr. Baffoe studies anti-oppression approaches to social work, focusing on immigrant and refugee organizations and international social work practice.

His PhD thesis examined the integration challenges facing new immigrant and refugee youth in their early years of settlement in Canadian society.

Dr. Baffoe has been involved in community organizing with immigrant and refugee organizations across Canada for more than sixteen years. In 1994, he launched Black Star Big Brothers, which provides mentors and positive role models to Black children growing up in single-parent families in Montreal. He has taught grassroots community organizing strategies at McGill and the Concordia University Institute for Community Development.

Esther Blum

Ester Blum’s research interests include: Social Work and Cultural Diversity; Anti Racism; Policy and Practice Related to Immigrants and Refugees.

Colin Bonnycastle

Colin Bonnycastle is Associate Professor and Director of the Northern Social Work Program in Thompson.  His work addresses criminal and restoration justice; social policy and poverty.  He has done or is currently involved in research in areas of homelessness, gendered violence, childcare, and women & economic restructuring in the North.  He has also written in areas of social work ethics, charity, religion and social welfare, and social justice.  Colin also is Grants Chair of the Thompson Community Foundation and sits on the Board of the Thompson Crisis Centre and the Domestic Violence Court Project.

Denis Bracken

Denis Bracken is Professor of Social Work at the University of Manitoba.  He holds degrees from the College of the Holy Cross, University of Toronto and the London School of Economics & Political Science.  Current research interests include family stress and torture survival, Aboriginal people and the criminal justice System and the criminal justice response to offenders with FASD.  He is the co-author of two reports for the Manitoba Government on working with domestic violence offenders. Professor Bracken has been a visiting professor at DeMontfort University (Leicester, UK), Trinity College Dublin and the Glasgow School of Social Work (Universities of Glasgow & Strathclyde).  At the University of Manitoba he has been director of the Inner City Social Work Program and the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Social Work responsible for Distance Education and undergraduate programmes.  Presently he is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace & Justice and Rector of St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba.

Janet Brady

Janet Brady researches in the areas of poverty; community development; and child welfare.

Maria Cheung

Maria Cheung is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Work. She has been doing research and social development work in China from 2004-2010. The project was a CIDA Tier One University Partnership project on gender equality and protection of human rights for women in China. Her publications include gender analysis of rural women in China, clinical practice and cross-cultural studies on immigrant couples and long-term marital satisfaction. Her new area of research interests are on spirituality, human rights and social work; and equity issues in university education etc.

Kim Clare

Kim Clare is the acting associate dean of undergraduate social work programs at the University of Manitoba. She is one of the lead researchers on the UM Connecting to Kids project, which aims to help children reach their full potential. 

Clare's research, teaching, and interests include strategic planning and program/service evaluation, women's "non-traditional" organizations, access to post-secondary education and small groups as social work intervention. She also specializes in social policy and gender analysis, community development, small groups, inner-city issues, inclusion and poverty reduction.

Lawrence Deane

Lawrence Deane works in Community Development, Community Economic Development, and Inter-cultural and International social work.  He is active in employment projects for inner city Aboriginal ex offenders.  He also works with marginalized migrant workers in urban centres in China.

Lyn Ferguson

Lyn Ferguson’s work focuses on Women's Issues; and Delivery of Child Day‐Care Services.

Greg Fidler

Greg Fidler is a Métis born in Dauphin, but raised in Northern Manitoba. He completed an MA through the University of Victoria, with a dissertation on Solvent Abuse Needs Assessment in a First Nation Community. Fidler is a senior instructor in the Northern Social Work program in Thompson and has been teaching for eleven years. Prior to this appointment, he was employed with Awasis Agency of Northern Manitoba a child and family service as case manager for Shamattawa. He is president with Ma-Mow-We-Tak Friendship Centre and an executive member with the Manitoba Association of Friendship Centres. Fidler’s research interests include homelessness, solvent abuse and community development. 

Harvy Frankel

Harvy Frankel researches in the areas of Family Therapy and Development; and Integrating Clinical Practice and Social Justice. Community approaches to blindness prevention in developing countries.  Services to individuals and families affected by FASD

Sid Frankel

Dr. Frankel’s research addresses poverty and social exclusion; population health promotion; and the social economy. Dr Frankel is a member of the Steering Committee of National Campaign 2000 to end child poverty, and has testified before House of Commons and Senate Committees on poverty eradication.

Don Fuchs

Don Fuchs researches in the areas of Social Network Intervention; Social Work and Disability; Self‐Help Then in Formal Helping; and Community Development/Organization.

Gwen Gosek

Instructor Gosek’s areas of interest are family violence and Aboriginal families; suicide in Aboriginal communities; and special-needs children and youth in Aboriginal child welfare. As a Cree woman, she sits on the university’s traditional peoples advisory committee.

Deana Halonen

The distance education program co-ordinator investigates women's violence; indigenous ways of practice; and indigenous knowledge and indigenous research methodologies.

Michael Hart

Dr. Hart’s research addresses indigenous ways of practice; oppression, colonization and resistance; mental health and indigenous people; and indigenous knowledge and indigenous research methodologies. The Cree scholar is co-director of the Manitoba First Nations Centre for Aboriginal Health Research and sits on the university’s traditional people’s advisory committee.

Tuula Heinonen

Tuula Heinonen focuses her research onViolence Against Women; Gender Relations; International Development; Cultural Identity and Retention of Immigrants; and Social Development in China

Diane Hiebert‐Murphy

Diane Hiebert-Murphy works in the areas of Therapy with Couples with a History of Violence in their Relationships; Family Violence; and Family Centred Practice in Childhood Disability Services

Judy Hughes

Judy Hughes researches how professional service providers understand and respond to intimate partner violence. Hughes recently studied the ways women indirectly disclose abuse to community health nurses and how the nurses recognize these verbal cues as indicators of intimate partner violence.

In another project, Hughes studies the experiences of women who are negotiating child custody arrangements and/or being investigated within the child welfare system.

Régine King

Régine Uwibereyeho King recently joined the University of Manitoba as an assistant professor of social work.

She graduated from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, in November 2011, with by a one-year CIHR post-doctoral fellowship in social aetiology of mental illness based at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She obtained her master's of education in counseling psychology and community development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

King was born and raised in Rwanda, where she witnessed and survived the 1994 genocide. She then worked as a co-ordinator and facilitator of a trauma healing program through World Vision Rwanda, bringing together the Hutu and Tutsi for mutual healing. She moved to Canada in 2000, where she worked as a mental-health counselor and a community activist through public speaking.

Her research interests include mental health, survivors of organized violence, cross-cultural mental-health interventions, forgiveness and reconciliation processes. Her doctoral research involved mental-health and trauma healing interventions in post-genocide Rwanda and her post-doctoral research has focused on refugee mental health in Toronto.

Kathy Levine

Kathy Levine works in the areas of Social Work Practice with Women; and Family Centred Practice.

Brad McKenzie

Brad McKenzie’s research interests lie with Aboriginal Child and Family Services International Social Work Education; and Community‐Based Services

Eveline Milliken

Dr. Milliken is an associate professor at the inner-city social work program. She works in the areas of women's issues/feminist perspectives; crosscultural communication; and cultural safety.

Dr. Milliken’s research interests include creating culturally safe environments; long-term effects of marginalization; transformational child welfare policy and practice, especially in inner city and Aboriginal communities; feminist/anti-oppressive practice; and communication and social work practice.

She is a member of the Centre for Human Rights Research initiative’s advisory board. 

Kendra Nixon

Kendra Nixon’s research interests include Violence against women, intimate partner violence, social and family policy, mothering, and social exclusion and poverty.

Lori Oberdorfer

Lori Oberdorfer’s research addresses Child Welfare; Women's Issues; and Aboriginal Issues.

Lynda Paziuk

Lynda Paziuk focuses her research on Cross‐Cultural Issues; and Family and Adult Literacy.

Yvonne Pompana

Dr. Pompana researches issues related to the colonization/decolonization experience in First Nation communities; Aboriginal approaches to social work practice; and Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous research methodologies. She is acting director of the inner-city social work program.

Dr. Pompana recieved her PhD in Indigenous Studies from Trent University in 2008 and her master's in social work from the University of Manitoba in 1997. Her areas of interest include research related to First Nations, teaching human behavior and social work practice in the Faculty of Social Work and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Native Studies.

Ranjan Roy

Ranjan Roy’s research focuses on Psychosocial Aspects of Medical Disorders with Special Reference to Chronic Pain.

Kelly Scott

Kelly Scott works in the areas of Social Work Practice with Children and Adults with Disabilities; Vocational Rehabilitation; and Child and Family Services.

Silvia Straka

Dr. Straka describes herself as a creative change agent, a critical thinker and a capacity builder. Professionally and personally committed to a feminist, anti-racist, anti-oppressive mission, she considers her research and teaching to be her forms of social work practice.

Dr. Straka is looking at the role of allies in developing indigenous research methodologies and ethics.

Her research interests include Aboriginal studies and human rights. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Straka left her first career in private-sector management to enter the field of social work. During her education at McGill, Dr. Straka became involved in national health policy research, co-management of an HIV/AIDS medical education project and child welfare projects. However, it was her nine years as a researcher at the CLSC René-Cassin in Montreal that led to her focus on social gerontology. The centre is affiliated with three universities and hosts a provincial research team in critical social gerontology. She completed her PhD on How social workers in community health-care settings understand and respond to concerns of intimate partner abuse in the lives of older women. Her research program aims to develop a feminist anti-oppressive practice approach to social gerontology through participatory action research. Dr. Straka’s initial teaching duties are in the areas of gerontology and mental health.

Laura Taylor

Laura Taylor’s work focuses on EAL and Adult Literacy; Immigration and Relocation Across the Lifespan; Disabilities (children and adults).

Sharon Taylor‐Henley

Sharon Taylor-Henley’s areas of interest lie with Aboriginal People: Development of Social Institutions within the Context of Self‐Government Framework; and Elders and Social Welfare Institutions to Serve Elders.

Alex Wright

Alex Wright’s research focuses on Policy and Practice Related to Child Family Services; Theory of Need; and Human Services Organizations.