Katherine Maurer

Dr. Katherine Maurer (she/her/elle) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, Associate Member Department of Pediatrics, Divisions of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and a faculty member of the Centre for Research on Children and Families at McGill University. She is lead of the McGill School of Social Work Equity Diversity Decolonization Indigenization Initiative (EDDII). She obtained her Ph.D. in Clinical Social Work at New York University Silver School of Social Work and a Master of Social Work from City University of New York Hunter College School of Social Work. Dr. Maurer practiced as a trauma therapist and clinical social worker in New York City. She has experience working with marginalized individuals and groups, particularly people experiencing/exposed to family violence and people experiencing homelessness and how intersectionalities of identity (SGM, racialized, indigenous, socioeconomic status, health status) affect individual, institutional, and social access to and quality of services. She engages in advocacy for transformative social change in practice, institutions, and social policy to disrupt systemic oppression and the social reproduction of inequality. She is involved with several community organizations in Montréal as well as being a member of several international research collaborations.

The focus of her research is on understanding the processes by which stressful experiences affect life course outcomes through both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Dr. Maurer studies the biopsychosocial impact of exposure to extreme stressors, such as interpersonal violence, poverty, and oppression on the development of affective (physiological and psychological) self-regulation capacities of adolescence and adults. A central aspect of her research is to critique, modify, and test etiological theories of family violence perpetration and concepts of resilience. She has a particular interest the critical developmental transition to adulthood. An ethics-based commitment to promote anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice and critical thought is at the centre of Dr. Maurer's approach to research and teaching.

Dr. Maurer’s research has been supported by grants from the FRQSC, SSHRC, CIHR, McGill Healthy Brains Healthy Lives, The McGill Centre for Research on Children and Families, the McConnell Foundation, and the Old Brewery Mission. She has held research fellowships with New York University’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research and the University of California-Davis Center for Poverty Research. Her poverty research focuses on the development and application of social capital theory in social work policy and practice and the social reproduction of disadvantage in the context of intersectionality of sexual and gender, socioeconomic status, and racialized identities.

Katy Konyk

Katy (she/her) is a doctoral student with the McGill School of Social Work. She joined the school in 2018 under the supervision of Professor Katherine Maurer. Katy’s research focuses on occupational mental health and resiliency in high stress work environments. Her dissertation explores how workers in high stress environments respond, emotionally and behaviourally, in moments of acute stress? Katy will conduct in-depth qualitative interviews with Canadian Correctional Officers (COs) both prior to beginning their employment and one-year into their career in order to explore how COs manage their capacity to regulate, emotionally and behaviourally, in moments of heightened stress.

Katy comes to the doctoral program after having worked as both a community worker and as a mental health clinician in Canada and the United States. She has provided individual and group counselling to individuals within a psychiatric facility and to adult males living in the community with criminal justice involvement. Katy was part of a pilot program between the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Corrections and Community Safety where she was a forensic social worker supporting adults within the Toronto South Detention Centre. Katy was also part of a province-wide initiative to deliver mental health and human rights training to correctional staff. It was in this role that Katy became inspired to research the mental health of Canadian correctional officers.

She holds a Masters in Social Work from the University of Toronto and a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia.

Anick Desrosiers

Anick is a PhD candidate in social work at McGill University. Under the supervision of Pr. Katherine Maurer, she is interested in the social organization of trauma recognition and responses in Montreal shelters. Her work is supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture and by the Trudeau Foundation.

Anick has been involved for nearly 20 years in Montreal's homelessness community organizations, as a worker, social worker, co-development group facilitator and now as a psychotherapist, working with organizations, workers and people who use homelessness services. From this close contact with her research field and the people who shape it, Anick can only assume a resolutely militant and collaborative posture, which is interested in individual and social experiences and in what influences them, with the assumed goal of participating in the construction of a just society, where everyone has a place. She is accompanied in this quest by Edison, an energetic young research assistant who also happens to be a golden retriever, and who is always excited to meet participants and do them good.

Maybel Gelly

Maybel is a master student with the McGill School of Social Work, under the supervision of Professor Katherine Maurer. Maybel's research focusses on the role that social workers are set to play in the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP), with a specific focus on the implications of these novel treatments for social work practice and education. She will conduct in-depth qualitative interviews with registered social workers in Québec, in order to explore their knowledge and perception of PAP and to better understand the place of the discipline of social work in the implementation of these treatments. Maybel have a great interest in the therapeutic potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. She was certified as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator with the Grof Transpersonal Training in 2016. Since then, she facilitates workshops in Montréal and Gatineau and now leads workshops in Québec City.

Maybel joined the RAaD Lab team in the fall of 2020. She was involved in the Intimate Partner Violence Research, exploring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on IPV services in Québec. She holds a Bachelors' degree in Social Work from the McGill University and a Bachelors of Arts in Literature form the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Maybel est candidate à la maîtrise à l'École de travail social de l'université McGill, sous la direction de la professeure Katherine Maurer. Son projet de recherche se penche sur le rôle que les travailleurs sociaux sont appelés à jouer dans le domaine émergent de la psychothérapie assistée par les psychédéliques (PAP), en abordant plus particulièrement les implications de ces nouveaux traitements sur la pratique du travail social et sur la formation professionnelle. Elle mènera des entretiens qualitatifs avec des travailleurs sociaux agréés au Québec, afin d'explorer leurs connaissances et leur perception au sujet des PAP et de mieux comprendre la place que pourrait occuper la discipline du travail social dans la mise en oeuvre de ces traitements. Maybel a un grand intérêt pour le potentiel thérapeutique des états de conscience non ordinaires. Elle a obtenu sa certification comme facilitatrice en respiration holotropique du Grof Transpersonal Training en 2016. Depuis, elle facilite des ateliers à Montréal et à Gatineau et dirige maintenant des ateliers à Québec.

Maybel a joint l'équipe du RAaD Lab à l'automne 2020. Elle a participé à la recherche sur la violence entre partenaires intimes, explorant les impacts de la pandémie de COVID-19 sur les services en violence conjugale au Québec. Elle est titulaire d'un baccalauréat en travail social de l'Université McGill et d'un baccalauréat ès arts en littérature de l'Université du Québec à Montréal.

Mert Kimyaci

Mert has been a part of the team since October 2018. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Bachelor of Social Work at the McGill University and is currently pursuing a Masters of Social Work degree. His past research experience has been in the fields of emotion regulation, resilience, and homelessness. Previously, he was involved in the implementation of the JoyPop study: Promoting brain health and resilience in social work students: Implementation and evaluation of a smartphone application. Currently he works on Understanding the phenomenon of intimate partner violence: Exploring a complex trauma informed intervention.

Elyass Asmar

Elyass is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. He is involved in two projects reviewing Domestic Violence and Anger Management interventions offered by MDVC. He wants to promote the use of a restorative justice framework to implement community reforms within traditionally government-operated institutions. He is also interested in the study of eastern mindfulness and its possible integration into western mental health initiatives.

Hannah Brais

Hannah Brais is the current research coordinator at the Old Brewery Mission as well as a PhD student in the McGill Geography department. She holds both an MSc of Geography, Urban and Environmental Studies and a BA of Urban Planning from Concordia University. Her current research focuses on specific questions surrounding homelessness, including women, veterans, low-barrier programming and policing. As a former housing advocate, her previous work focused on financialization, precarity, gentrification and Canadian landlord-tenant policies.