Denise McLane-Davison

Dr. Denise McLane-Davison is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, and scholar-activist whose work is grounded in Black Feminist, Womanist, and Africana epistemologies. She is a Full Professor and Graduate Program Director in the School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she provides transformative leadership in curriculum innovation, research development, and community-engaged scholarship. Her work centers Black humanity, cultural memory, and collective healing, with particular attention to African-centered social work, health equity, Black women’s leadership, and liberatory pedagogy.

Dr. McLane-Davison is the author of African-Centered Social Work (Oxford University Press, 2025), a landmark text that advances a communal, restorative, and justice-oriented framework for social work practice. Her scholarship resists colonial, positivist hierarchies of knowledge and instead honors multiple ways of knowing, including interdisciplinary Africanist scholarship and the “mother wit” and lived expertise of Black communities. Her research and pedagogy integrate archival inquiry, arts-based methods, land-based learning, and community partnership as pathways toward wholeness, healing, and Black flourishing.

At TMU, Dr. McLane-Davison has led significant curricular transformation, including the implementation of mandatory graduate courses in Indigenous Resurgence and Social Work Practice with Black Canadians. She is the founder of the Revolutionary Dreaming Black Feminist Scholars Retreat and Revolutionary Dreaming Writing Circles, which create sustainable spaces for Black scholarly community, intergenerational mentorship, and intellectual and spiritual care. She also serves as an advisory member of the TMU Urban Farm and Black Food Sovereignty Initiative.

Dr. McLane-Davison serves on the editorial leadership of the Canadian Social Work Review, a bilingual, peer-reviewed journal shaping contemporary Canadian and international social work scholarship. She is a highly sought-after speaker whose work has been translated into Portuguese, Twi, and Hebrew.

Nationally and internationally, Dr. McLane-Davison serves on the Council on Social Work Education's Board of Directors and as Chair of the Commission on Research. Her contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the Zenobia L. Hikes Women of Color Teaching-Research Award, the Distinguished Achievement in Social Work Education Award from the National Association of Black Social Workers, the Feminist Scholar Award, multiple Feminist Mentorship Awards, and a special United States congressional citation from Chris Van Hollen recognizing her as Social Work Educator of the Year.