Dr. Kathy de Jong

Assistant ProfessorKathy de Jong

School of Social Work
St. John's College
Room: J-3022
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Phone: 709-864-4716
Email: kdejong@mun.ca 

Kathy de Jong, (pronouns:she/her; they/them) completed her PhD. at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2020. She previously earned an MSW (with distinction) at Wilfrid Laurier University in 1995 and an honors BA in sociology at McMaster University in 1991. Kathy joined the Memorial faculty in 2018. Prior to that, she spent 23 years in Ontario employed as a Social Work professional in the field of Children’s Mental Health. During this time, she served in various capacities, both clinical and administrative.

Kathy’s area of scholarly interest is in critical mental health as it pertains to service delivery to 2SLGBTQIA+ youth and their providers. She is particularly interested in the lived experience of youth service users and how they have experienced the embedded heteronormativity in the service system. Similarly, she is interested in understanding how service providers experience the same and what they do to try and mitigate its impact. All of this with a view toward creating a safer and more inclusive mental health service delivery system for all children, youth and their families regardless of gender and sexual expression/identification.

Kathy focuses her energies on teaching practice-based courses in a safe, transparent and engaging learning space. Her greatest passion is challenging conventional practice wisdom and encouraging the inclusion of a critical lens into micro-practice while integrating practice-based learning with social work theory. Her hope and desire is to be a mentor and to foster a new generation of social workers that will not only serve clients well but also transform the service delivery system in the process.

Kathy is a second generation Canadian settler of European decent. She acknowledges that she is a guest on the lands where Memorial University's campuses are situated and in doing so humbly acknowledges and respects that these lands are in the traditional territories of diverse Indigenous groups and represent the diverse histories and cultures of the Beothuk, Mi'kmaq, Innu, and Inuit of this province.

de Jong, K. (2018). Book review: LGBTQ people and social work: Intersectional perspectives, edited by Brian J. O'Neill, Tracy A. Swan, Nick J. Mulé, Toronto: Ontario, Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2015. Journal of LGBTQ Youth, April 2018.

de Jong, Kathleen, "STORIES FROM THE RAINBOW ROAD: 2SLGBTQIA+ Identified Youth and Service Provider Experiences of Mental Health Service Delivery in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador" (2021). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2342.

Link to doctoral project summary presentation