Meet our RWW Chairs

A.J. Withers is the Ruth Wynn Woodward Junior Chair of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Department and an activist and scholar working towards decolonial social justice. Their primary focuses are on issues of homelessness and disability justice. Their latest book, Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing (2021, Fernwood) is based on homelessness organizing work in Toronto – which they were involved in for about twenty years. They co-authored A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working, with Chris Chapman (2019, University of Toronto Press). This book is an examination of the harms that people who believe they have good intentions cause when they set out to help others/‘the other’. It examines professional social work’s (and non-professionals doing social working) active role in genocide, white supremacy, eugenics and cisheteropatriarchy. Their first book is Disability Politics and Theory (2012, Fernwood) which provides an accessible entry into understanding disability, ableism and access. They teach courses that centre an intersectional analysis of social justice and examine issues of power, social relations, capitalism, colonialism and social change.

Kate Braid

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 2006 - 2007

Elizabeth Philipose

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 2005 - 2006

Louise Chappell

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, Spring 2005

Sue Wilkinson

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 2002 - 2004

Dionne Brand

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 2000 - 2002

Sunera Thobani

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1996 - 2000

Vanaja Dhruvarajan

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1994 - 1995

Margaret Malone

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Post-Doctoral Fellow January - December 1993

Margaret Little

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Post-Doctoral Fellow January - December 1993

Marnie Stanley

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Post-Doctoral Fellow September 1991 - August 1992

Deborrah Dunne

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Post-Doctoral Fellow September 1991 - August 1992

Hilda Ching

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1990 - 1991

Marjorie Griffin Cohen

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1989 - 1990

Daphne Marlatt

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1988 - 1989

Rosemary Brown

SFU Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1987

Susan Penfold

Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair, 1985 -1986