Monica Anne Batac (she/they/siya) is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba and a founding member and co-organizer of the Filipino Canadian Social and Community Workers Network. Monica is a second-generation Filipinx in the Canadian diaspora and first-generation student and scholar. Informed by the self-help and empowerment traditions, her interdisciplinary praxis focuses on community capacity-building and mobilizing with Filipino/a/x community members, groups, and organizations. She centers Filipino/a/x ways of knowing, being, and doing from feminist and decolonizing perspectives. Monica is committed to working with and in her community, mga kapwa.
Jake Pyne has been an advocate and community-based researcher in Toronto’s transgender community for over a decade. He has worked to improve transgender access to emergency services, health care, family law, and support for gender-independent children and youth. From 2001–2008, Jake led policy and training initiatives at The 519, earning provincial and city awards. He co-organized Canada’s first National Workshop on Gender Creative Kids and helped launch GenderCreativeKids.ca. As a researcher, Jake has co-led national studies like Trans PULSE and projects addressing family law bias against transgender parents. His scholarly work examines the social and institutional conditions shaping the lives of gender non-conforming people. Jake holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from Ryerson University and is pursuing further studies at McMaster University.
Dr. Jennifer Ma is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work at McMaster University. Her research focuses on systemic oppression and addressing social inequalities through a critical race feminist, anti-colonial framework, and multi-method approaches. Her research interests revolve around social justice work with communities that are systemically discriminated against, including Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities, racialized migrants and forcibly displaced people, children and families involved with child welfare, 2SLGBTQIA+ people and the intersections among these positionalities.
Dr. Ma’s research and practice involve working with racialized communities through a community-engaged model that connects healing and political agency. Specifically, her research is in these interrelated areas: 1) systemic discrimination towards First Nations and racialized migrants through child welfare and migration systems; and 2) community-led, anti-colonial, and anti-racist responses to systemic discrimination, including critical statistics, creative and participatory methods, nature-based approaches, and solidarity organizing among scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists.
