I work in the history and philosophy of social work and social welfare, exploring the evolving encounter between scientific and social movement knowledge for how they influence understandings of social justice and social progress. I am particularly interested in how material semiotic infrastructures stabilize versions of social justice and how people relate to and work to change these infrastructures and versions in different places and times.

Prior to entering the academy, I worked for about 15 years in direct practice in Toronto, Canada, primarily as front-line staff in the homeless shelter system, in staff training and program evaluation, and in various forms of worker, network and social movement organizing. I remain committed to the everyday pragmatics of place-based anti-poverty work.

My current research engages the radical challenge of changing environments to the perceived scope of human-centric social work and social welfare systems. This involves a number of projects focused on canonical narratives in social work education, changes to the social work education accreditation standards and Code of Ethics, and exploring how social workers are integrating environmental concerns into direct practice. The largest of these projects is a historiography of settler Canadian social work foregrounding the influence of the natural environment on the development of the profession.

With colleagues, I also work on critical disability research projects and I co-convene the Social Work and the More-than-human Special Interest Group, affiliated with the European Social Work Research Association.

Supervision

I am interested in supervising students working on critically, philosophically, and historically grounded projects related to foundational questions about social work and social welfare. If you are interested in working with me, please first review my published work. When you email me, include information about your interests and how you see these connecting to my areas of interest.

Lynch H. & Wilson, T. E. (2023). Canonical critiques and geopolitical shifts: Revisiting the oppressive neoliberalism/authentic community dichotomy in social work. Social Work & Society, 21(1), 1-15. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-sws-2936

Lynch H. & Wilson, T. E. (2023). Special issue editorial: Social work futures—what social work does the world need now? Social Work & Society, 21(1), 1-13. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-sws-2915

Wilson, T. E. & Joseph, A. J. (2023). Special issue editorial: Critical temporalities in social work after “the end of history.” Critical and Radical Social Work, 11(3), 327-331. https://doi.org/10.1332/20498608Y2023D000000005

Wilson, T.E., Lynch, H., & Fisch, V. (2022). Raising the “environmental question” in social work in Canada and Scotland. International Social Work. https://doi.org/10.1177/00208728221094415

Wilson, T.E. (2022). “Passing on” critical social work. In S. A. Webb (Ed.), Routledge handbook of international critical social work: New perspectives and agendas. Routledge (in press).

Wilson, T.E. (2021). An invitation into the trouble with humanism for social work. In V. Bozalek & B. Pease (Eds.), Post-anthropocentric social work: Critical posthumanism and new materialist perspectives (pp. 32-45). Routledge Advances in Social Work.

Wilson T.E. (2021). Surveying critical and social justice-emphatic academic social work in Canada. Canadian Social Work Review / Revue canadienne de service social, 38(1), 25-45. https://doi.org/10.7202/1078388ar

Wilson, T.E. (2020). Social work stories: Situated views and larger visions in disciplinary scholarship and education. Social Work Education: The International Journal, 39(5), 572-583. http://doi.org/ 10.1080/02615479.2019.1703930

Wilson, T.E. (2017). Repairing what’s left in social work, or, when knowledge no longer cuts. British Journal of Social Work, 47(5), 1310-1325. http://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw114

Areas of Scholarship: Social work and environment; history and philosophy of social work; critical social theories; generational standpoints; social justice.

Areas of Practice: Homelessness; youth work; community work.