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Dr. Mandeep Kaur Mucina is an Associate Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø. Mandeep did her undergraduate degree in child and youth care and has a MA in Social work from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from OISE, University of Toronto. 

Practice, research and teaching background

Over the course of 20 years, Mandeep has worked with children, youth, and families in various contexts. Mandeep first began working in after-school care programs and in youth programming in Victoria. After completing her Bachelor’s degree, Mandeep worked as a child protection worker in Vancouver on the Aboriginal family services team, caring for Indigenous children and youth in care, and working with Indigenous families towards reunification. During this transformative time, Mandeep began working with women and girls involved in child protection who were survivors of family, domestic, and sexualized violence. Hearing women and girls' stories of violence, Mandeep was inspired by the resiliency and resistance they continued to demonstrate in their lives and wanted to work further in the gender-based violence sector, which led her to pursue her Master in Social Work (MSW) to further her work and knowledge in the field. After completing her MSW she began working with migrant families struggling with family violence, and more specifically young girls struggling with “honour” related violence in their everyday lives. Mandeep completed her doctorate in Adult Education and Community Development at OISE, the University of Toronto, she focused her research and work on “honour” related violence in the South Asian Diaspora and gathered life histories of women who experienced family violence, yet continued to resist, reclaim, and transgress boundaries of “honour” throughout their lives. Mandeep has been teaching post-secondary education for 15 years across Canada, including at Ryerson University, Dalhousie University and Mount Saint Vincent University. Mandeep came to UVic in 2017 and teaches across both undergrad and grad programs.

Research and scholarly interests

Mandeep’s current research and social justice work focuses on family violence, gender-based violence, critical migration studies, and exploring second-generation South Asian women’s resistance, identity, and encounters with racism in the diaspora. Mandeep has extensive experience in community-engaged research with BIPOC women and girls, narrative and life-history research, action-based research, critical discourse analysis and policy and practice analysis, South Asian feminisms, and intersectionality-based research. Mandeep is co-leading an SSHRC-funded research grant with Dr. Rupaleem Bhuyan titled Bordering Practices: Systemic Racism, Immigration, and Child Welfare. is a collaborative research project in partnership with child welfare, immigration, and gender-based violence service providers and advocates in ON and BC. The project aims to understand how immigration policies and systemic racism shape child welfare policies and practices with children, youth and families.