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As the ��֦��Ƶ Faculty of Social Work celebrates its 60th anniversary, this year’s Annual Research Symposium will offer more than just the usual offering of current scholarship; it will also reflect on the legacy of two impactful faculty members and the continuing relationships that have helped to shape six decades of community-engaged social work.

Running March 4-5 in ��֦��Ƶ, Edmonton and online, the symposium’s theme, Global to Local: Collaborating with Communities to Create Change, highlights the faculty’s long-standing commitment to ethical, relational and de-colonial approaches to research. 

Along with a program themed around global social work and its local intersections, two special panel conversations on March 4 also honour the intergenerational legacy behind that work, illustrating how global engagement and local activism have defined the faculty since its earliest years, and how that work continues.

Global partnerships, local impact

The features professor emerita , MSW'98, PhD'04, in conversation with Social Work doctoral candidate Jill Hoselton, BSW'14, MSW'22, exploring Kreitzer's legacy and how the two scholars' international partnerships have influenced and shaped their work in Edmonton.

Kreitzer’s work and connection to Africa began in Ghana in 1994 when she travelled there to teach at the and continued as an MSW student and PhD student at U��֦��Ƶ. 

Over three decades, those early connections grew into sustained collaborations supporting African social work scholarship and capacity building. She continues to serve as an external examiner for doctoral students, also participating in promotion reviews and mentoring scholars across institutions.

“You never know what you teach or what you do and its effect on other people,” says Kreitzer who was recently recognized as a by the The Social Workers Association of Alberta. “If I have a legacy, I hope it is that I have supported social work in Africa in some meaningful way.”

One the scholars impacted by Kreitzer’s teaching was , PhD, who, fittingly, will be part of the morning panel. Abukari is an associate professor and former interim dean of social work at . 

Abukari, who hails from Northern Ghana, was one of Kreitzer’s students in 1994 when she taught at the University of Ghana’s Social Work Unit. The two have remained colleagues over the years, involved in different projects concerning African social work.

Hoselton first encountered Kreitzer as a BSW student at U��֦��Ƶ Social Work's , where her community-development course rooted in activism and global engagement shifted her academic path. Today, her PhD research collaborates with Somali refugee women in Edmonton to explore how people create a sense of “home” after forced migration.

Using arts-based methods, including mapping and photography, Hoselton, who was named a 2025  is collaborating with the community to explore how social connections, place and belonging shape wellbeing. 

Like Kreitzer, Hoselton says her experience travelling in Africa, as part of her placement in Ghana, really helped to deepen her understanding of displacement and resilience.

“Refugees are often discussed in abstract and problematic terms, like ‘waves’ of refugees,” she says. “But these are individuals with families, histories and everyday lives.”

For both scholars, the global-to-local theme is lived practice. Kreitzer’s research with included travelling to Rwanda to better understand survivors’ experiences and reflects the importance of grounding research in context and relationship.

Their March 4 conversation will explore mentorship, cultural humility and the long arc of partnership, values that echo the symposium’s broader emphasis on co-creating solutions with communities rather than for them.

A life of thoughtful disruption

If the morning session reflects international engagement, an afternoon, in-person event at Social Work’s ��֦��Ƶ campus will spotlight decades of local activism.

“A Life of Thoughtful Disruption” features professor emerita , PhD, in a conversation facilitated by , MSW'06, PhD'17, and social workers Lemlem Haile and Carla Bertsch, BA'08, who is also a sessional instructor with the faculty. 

The panel discussion will touch on Valentich’s role in shaping feminist scholarship and community advocacy in ��֦��Ƶ and across Canada.

Valentich, who helped establish Ottawa’s first rape crisis centre at Carlton University in 1973, joined U��֦��Ƶ Social Work in 1976 where she continued her advocacy work in the faculty and across campus, where she served as Advisor to the President on Women’s Issues for the ��֦��Ƶ from 1991-94, helping to advance 123 institutional recommendations aimed at improving gender equity across campus.

Her advocacy work over the decades includes seven binders worth of letters to the editor, a push to make the reluctant Faculty of Social Welfare into a non-smoking space, and a very public, decades-long gender-equity campaign to with the more inclusive term “councillor.” From the time the idea was floated, in the late 1970s, it took until 2013 for the change to occur, a reminder that social change is often gradual and hard-won.

A U��֦��Ƶ Social Work teacher and researcher, Lorenzetti, who had just relocated from Montréal, took Valentich’s feminist course during her Master of Social Work, which she says felt transformative. 

“It was the first space in my education where there was an explicit conversation about feminism,” she recalls. “And, in the very conservative context I found myself in, it was invigorating.”

Valentich’s classroom and advocacy work helped to fuel and inform a broader community of activist-scholars who continue to work for a better society pursuing anti-racism, introducing human sexuality into social work practice, de-colonial justice, migrant rights and gender equity work. This included the genesis of , co-founded by Valentich; Lorenzetti; Mare Donly, MSW'06; Linda McFarlane, BSW'84, MSW'11; Yvonne Schmitz; and Karen Wylie, who are still active in this movement today. 

While Valentich and Lorenzetti reflect on the changes they’ve helped support over they decades, they remain clear-eyed about the current state of the world. 

While some progress may have been made over 60 years, they note that injustice persists, and that scholars have an ethical responsibility to move beyond the institution and remain publicly engaged.

Honouring continuity

As the Faculty of Social Work marks its 60th year, the March 4 sessions in ��֦��Ƶ and March 5 event in Edmonton serve as both reflection and recommitment.

The global lens of the 2026 symposium signals where social work is headed: toward transdisciplinary collaboration, decolonial practice and community-centred knowledge. At the same time, these featured conversations honour two scholars who helped set the trajectory and the foundation for today’s researchers to build on.