Assistant Professor

School of Social Work
St. John's College,
Room: J - 4010
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Phone: (709) 864-7516
Email:  sshaikh@mun.ca

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Dr. Sobia Shaheen Shaikh is an Assistant Professor with Memorial’s School of Social Work. She holds a doctorate degree (PhD) (Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto), a master of social work (MSW) in social welfare policy (McMaster University), and bachelor degrees in social work (BSW) and in economics (BA) (McMaster University).

Sobia’s academic and professional interests are built on longstanding commitments to intersectional social justice and social change work. Sobia’s social work and community experience include advocacy, activism, organizational development, counselling, research, policy analysis (social, economic and organizational) and community development (in local and international contexts). Specifically, she has worked across a variety of social concerns, including: violence against women, global migration, environmental and ecological destruction, poverty, disability, youth citizenship, racism, substance use, international human rights, women’s health and wellbeing, children’s psychiatrization, and disability.

Sobia’s research focuses on the connections among social justice practice, organizational and community change and social policy from the standpoint of activists and social workers. Her research explores how social change work is socially organized; that is, how social justice practice is shaped by people’s everyday acts, organizational processes and social policy. In her research, she weaves together critical theoretical perspectives including institutional ethnography and other materialist traditions, theories of the everyday, poststructural analysis, feminist theory, and postcolonial/anticolonial and antiracist thought. She is the principal investigator on a national policy study called Shifting Priorities. The main goal of this project is to explore ethnographically how women’s social service organizations navigate current policy priorities of the federal government.

Sobia brings over ten years of university teaching experience, primarily in social work, women’s/gender studies and sociology to her students. Sobia’s teaching, supervision and research interests include: critical social work, social policy, social justice praxis, critical research, community engagement, organizational change, social service administration, antiracism, advocacy and activism, intersectionality, environmental and social justice, families, disability, feminist theory, global migration, diaspora, decolonizing and anti-colonial knowledge production, professional ethics, and sociology of professional knowledge.

You can find more information on Dr. Sobia Shaheen Shaikh’s academic profile at http://mun.academia.edu/SobiaShaheenShaikh.