Dr. Brenda LeFrancois

Dr. Brenda A. LeFrançois
Chair, PhD Program
Associate Professor
Cross-appointment with the Division of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine
School of Social Work
Office: J-4012
Telephone: 709-864-2555
Email: blefrancois@mun.ca

Dr. LeFrançois completed a BA at McGill University. She obtained her MA in Mental Health from Anglia Ruskin University (UK), graduating with distinction. She holds a PhD from the Tizard Centre, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK).

Prior to taking on the position at Memorial University in 2010, Dr. LeFrançois taught Social Work as a tenured faculty member at Laurentian University, and taught part-time both in the undergraduate programme in Community Care at the University of Kent at Canterbury as well as in the post-graduate programme in Mental Health at Anglia Ruskin University.

Her doctoral research was on the topic of children’s rights and power relations within child and adolescent mental health services. In addition to specializing in children’s rights, Dr. LeFrançois’ varied research interests include issues relating to: gender, parenting and mental distress; sanism and mad studies; social activism; the application of queer theory to psychiatric diagnosis and practice; as well as ethnographic and participatory approaches to studying mental distress and children’s culture.

Dr. LeFrançois’ main teaching experience has included courses at the BSW and MSW levels in social work theory, with special emphasis on participatory practice, critical social work and post-structuralism. In addition, she has taught child abuse and neglect, social work with children and youth, community development and social activism, law and ethics, group work as well as qualitative research.

Dr. LeFrançois will consider supervising new PhD students with interests in the areas of childhood studies, mad studies, critical disability studies, critical mental health, critical whiteness studies and/or social activism.

For more information regarding Dr. LeFrançois’ academic profile, visit: http://mun.academia.edu/BrendaLeFran%C3%A7ois

Selected recent publications:

LeFrançois, B.A, (2013). The psychiatrization of our children, or, an auto-ethnographic narrative of perpetuating First Nations genocide through 'benevolent' institutions. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2, 1, 108-123.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2013). Adultism. In T. Teo (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Critical
Psychology: SpringerReference (www.springerreference.com). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. DOI: 10.1007/SpringerReference_304657

LeFrançois, B.A. (2013). Ethnography. In T. Teo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Critical
Psychology: SpringerReference (www.springerreference.com). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. DOI: 10.1007/SpringerReference_304748

LeFrançois, B.A., Menzies, R. and Reaume, G. (2013). (Eds.). Mad
Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press Inc.

Menzies, R., LeFrançois, B.A. and Reaume, G. (2013). Introducing Mad
Studies. In LeFrançois, B.A., Menzies, R. and Reaume, G. (Eds.). Mad Matters:
A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press
Inc.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2013). Queering Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: The subversion of heternormativity in practice. Children & Society, 27, 1, 1-12.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2012). And we are still being psychiatrised. Asylum, 19 (1),
7-9.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2012). Distressed fathers and their children: A review of the
literature. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 58 (2), 123-130.

Bâ, O.B. and LeFrançois, B.A. (2011). Ethnic genocide, trauma, healing and recovery: The case of identity ruptures and restoration amongst Bosnian refugees. In Matyok, T. (Ed.). Critical Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies: Implications for Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2011). Supporting positive relationships in families where fathers suffer with mental distress. Critical Social Work, 12, 1.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2010). Response to the Shaking the Movers IV report, re: the right to information. In CRAN (Ed.). Children's Rights Academic Network Final Report - 3rd Annual General Meeting. Ottawa: Landon Pearson Resource Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2010). Children’s resistance: Organizing collectively through children’s rights legislation and children’s agency. Conference Proceedings for PsychOUT. OISE, University of Toronto.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2009). Mental Health and the Fathering Role, Toronto: Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

LeFrançois, B.A. (2008). “It’s Like Mental Torture”: Participation and mental health services, The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16, 233-248.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2007). Children’s Participation Rights: Voicing Opinions in Inpatient Care, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 12: 2, 94-97.

LeFrançois, B.A. (2006). “They will find us and infect our bodies”: The views of adolescent inpatients taking psychiatric medication, Radical Psychology, 5:1