The Social Work Routes Podcast

Heather McCalden is a multidisciplinary artist working with text, image and movement. She is a graduate of the Royal College of Art (2015) and has exhibited at Roulette Intermedium, Pierogi Gallery, National Sawdust, Testbed 1, and Seattle Symphony. In 2021 she won the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize. The Observable Universe is her first book.  https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-observable-univer...

Mab Segrest talks about her book, Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry from Georgia’s Milledgeville Asylum. Mab Segrest is the former Fuller-Matthai Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Connecticut College.

Tarja Pösö, Professor in Social Work at Tampere University, Finland, has a long experience of more than 30 years in studying social work, especially child welfare, from different perspectives, with a keen interest in cross-country perspectives and exploring methods and ethics for child welfare studies. Her work has been published in national and international journals and books. One issue that has...

Harry Lunabba is a University lecturer in social work and a youth researcher at the University of Helsinki. In his research he has mainly focused on studies on young masculinities. His latest article analyses how to recognise young masculinities vulnerabilities in youth work. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/11033088231179552

Minna Zechner is an Associate Professor in Social Work at the University of Helsinki. Her speciality area is health and social services. Her educational background is in social policy, both Master and Doctoral degrees are from the University of Tampere, Finland. For eight years she worked in a University of Applied Sciences in Seinäjoki, then moved on to the University of Lapland from where she mo...

Tobias Pötzsch, Ph. D, works as a lecturer in Social Work at the University of Helsinki’s Swedish School of Social Science. My doctoral dissertation; Critical Perspectives on Social inclusion in Integration Education Programs for Adult Migrants (2020) explored inclusion strategies through the lenses of anti-oppressive practices, critical whiteness studies, and critical migration studies in Finland...

Stanley Witkin is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the University of Vermont, USA and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. USA. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin and an honorary doctorate from the University of Lapland, Finland. He is the co-founder (with Dennis Saleebey) and current president of the Global Partn...

Harjeet Badwall is an Associate Professor at York University’s School of Social Work in Toronto, Canada.  Her areas of research focus on disrupting racism, whiteness, and colonialism in Social Work. Harjeet teaches core theory and practice courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels of the program. Her areas of focus include racialized and gender-based violence,  practice and theory conn...

Susan was born and raised in Fresno, California, USA, to refugee parents of Hmong descent.  She received her Bachelor of Social Work from California State University, Fresno, and her Master of Public Administration with a specialization in Organizational Leadership from National University.  Susan is the founder and CEO of A Hopeful Encounter, Inc., a CBO (community-based organization) serving Sou...

Marjaana Jauhola (she/they) is an ethnographer at the intersection of international politics, development, peace and conflict, and feminism. With life's historical and visual methods Marjaana focuses on global politics of post-conflict/disaster reconstruction and gendered and sexualized notions of piety, good life, and better futures. Currently at the University of Helsinki, but soon joining...

Jessica Schulz (she/they) is a passionate feminist scholar-activist from California’s Central Valley. With degrees from Fresno State and Iowa State Universities, Jessica aims to help institutions of higher education support student victims and survivors of interpersonal violence, and marginalized communities, through scholarship, action, and centering students. Jessica’s research focuses on the wa...

Cristina Herrera earned her PhD in English from Claremont Graduate University and is a Professor and Director of Chicano/Latino Studies at Portland State University. Born and raised in Oxnard, California, she is a second-generation Chicana. Her book, ChicaNerds in Chicana Young Adult Literature: Brown and Nerdy (2020) were published in Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture Series and was t...

Dayka Robinson is a Sovereignty Guide, nationally recognized Interior Designer, World Traveler & unapologetic Wild Woman helping women know themselves, trust themselves & honor themselves, so they can speak their truth, know their worth and trust their authority. Whether helping women identify the gaps in their personal, relationship & professional lives, adventuring across the world s...

Dr. Michael Barron is an Irish community activist who since the late 1990s has worked with minority and marginalized communities. He was centrally involved in the LGBTI+ rights movement in Ireland (including the marriage equality referendum campaigns) as founding director of BeLonG To, the campaign to remove the ‘Baptism Barrier’ from Irish schools. He carried out the official review of the Togeth...

Dr. Quenette Walton is an assistant professor at the University of Houston in the Graduate College of Social Work. The aims of her research program are to build knowledge and develop a theory that informs policies, practices, and culturally relevant and evidence-based interventions in order to reduce depression and increase wellness and well-being among middle-class Black women. She realizes that...

Luke has family connections to the Gunditjmara nation of Victoria (Australia) and is a Research Associate located within the Social Work Innovation Research Living Space (SWIRLS) at Flinders University. Through his research, Luke seeks to understand the role Indigenous culture plays as a protective factor within the child protection system, whilst also exploring the nuances between child safety an...

Professor Claudia Bernard, Goldsmiths, University of London  Dr Claudia Bernard is Professor of Social Work and Co-Head of the Department of Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies, at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests lie in the areas of social work with children and families, gender-based violence, critical race theory, equalities, and social justice. She has written wid...

Yer Vang was born in Ban Vinai, Thailand, and raised in Fresno, California. She comes from a big family with a total of eight siblings: three sisters and five brothers.   She is the first in her family to pursue higher education and a first-generation student who completed her Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University (SJSU) in August 2020. She also holds a Ba...

Robbie Gilligan is Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. His path to professional social work began through voluntary youth work in inner city Dublin. His formative practice experience came from his first social work post in a largely rural community, followed by a post back in inner city Dublin. Since his transition to the academic world in 1981, his professional a...

Alan J. Dettlaff is Dean of the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston and the inaugural Maconda Brown O’Connor Endowed Dean’s Chair. Prior to entering academia, Dean Dettlaff worked in the child welfare system as a caseworker and an administrator. He received his bachelor’s degree in social work from TCU, and master’s in social work and PhD from the University of Texas at Ar...

Michael Yellow Bird, MSW, Ph. D., is Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba. He is an enrolled member of the MHA Nation (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) in North Dakota, USA. He has held faculty and administrative appointments at the University of British Columbia, University of Kansas, Arizona State University, Humboldt State University, and North Dakota Stat...

Jim Campbell is Professor of Social Work in the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin. He was co-editor of the British Journal of Social Work from 2010-15. Jim has a number of teaching and research interests including mental health social work and the law, and social work and political conflict. He has co-edited a recent text in this second area of inte...

Susan Chandler, MSW, PhD, is a community organizer and social work educator.  She retired from 20 years of teaching in the University of Nevada, Reno, School of Social Work, but continues to teach her favorite course, Mass Incarceration, Race and Justice, at the university.  She is the author, with Jill Jones, of the prize-winning book, Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places, and since 2014 ha...

Bob Pease is Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Social Change at the University of Tasmania and Honorary Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. His most recent books are Doing Critical Social Work (co-editor, Allen and Unwin) 2016, Men, Masculinities and Disaster (co-editor, Routledge, 2016), Radicals in Australian Social Work (co...

Welcome to season two