Skip to Main Content
You are now in the main content area
June Yee

June Yee

Associate Professor, School of Social Work and Academic Coordinator, Internationally Educated Social Work Professionals Bridging Program
EducationBA, BSW, MSW, PhD
Phone416-979-5000, ext. 556224

June Yee's scholarly research focuses on race and racism, anti-colonialism and access and equity issues for racialised communities in the areas of health, education and social services. More recently, Yee has explored the contradictions and complexities of multiple positionalities that reproduce forms of oppression, and has written on racism, whiteness and white supremacy to tackle structural intersectionality. In her practice, she is committed to finding creative and different ways to systemically change the quality of access and equity measures used in direct practice service work.

Currently, she is engaged in research on how to implement an anti-oppressive framework in child welfare that is used by various Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario. As principal and co-principal investigator, Yee has been awarded a number of external peer-reviewed research grants, including from the CIHR and Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction for a study titled Striving for Best Practices and Equitable Mental Health Care Access for Racialised Communities in Toronto, and from Canadian Heritage and Human Resources and Skills Development for a project titled Examining Systemic and Individual Barriers by Ethno-Racial Minority Social Workers in Mainstream Agencies: A Community Project.

Yee has received a number of awards at Toronto Metropolitan University, in the community and internationally. In 2017, she received the Dean’s Teaching Award. In 2002, she received the Professor of the Year Award for her excellence in research, teaching, and scholarship. In 2008, she was co-awarded the Ontario Association of Social Workers’ Social Work Leaders Award for her contribution to the creation of the Internationally Educated Social Work Professionals Bridging Program, a partnership between the School of Social Work and the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education. In 2013-2014, she received the Best Conceptual Article designation from Social Work Education: An International Journal for a co-authored article: Is Anti-Oppression Teaching in Canadian Schools of Social Work a Form of Neo-Liberalism?

  • Race and racism
  • Anti-racism and anti-colonialism
  • Whiteness and white supremacy
  • Organizational change and evaluation models
  • Structural intersectionality and multiple positionalities
  • Immigrant and settlement services

Research projects:

  • 2014 – Part 3 of 3: Anti-Oppressive Evaluative Operational Plans of 16 Departments of Peel Children’s Aid (PCA). Mississauga, Canada: Peel Children’s Aid.
    Co-Principal Investigators: June Yee and Helen Wong
  • 2013 – Anti-Oppression Readiness Assessment of Halton Children’s Aid Society. Burlington, Canada: Halton Children’s Aid Society. 
    Co-Principal Investigators: June Yee and Helen Wong
  • 2012 – Part 2 of 3: Environmental Scan of Peel Children’s Aid (PCA): Applying the Anti-Oppression Framework for Child Welfare in Ontario To Bring About Systemic Change at PCA – Putting Anti-Oppression Into Action, pp. 1-74. Mississauga, Canada: Peel Children’s Aid.
    Co-Principal Investigators: June Yee and Helen Wong
  • 2012 – Part 1 of 3: Towards Anti-Oppressive Organizational Change: A Review of the Literature on Disproportionality and Disparity and Organizational Change, pp. 1-39. Mississauga, Canada: Peel Children’s Aid.
    Co-Principal Investigators: June Yee and Helen Wong
    Authored By: Shashiah, S., Yee, J. Y. and Wong, H.
  • 2010 – An Anti-Oppression Framework for Child Welfare in Ontario, pp. 1-52. Toronto, Canada: The Ontario Child Welfare Anti-Oppression Roundtable.
    Co-Principal Investigators: June Yee and Helen Wong

Peer-reviewed publications

Articles:

  • Yee, J. Y. & Dumbrill, G. C. (2023). [Review of the book Routledge handbook of critical studies in whiteness, by Shona Hunter & Christi van der Westhuizen]. Critical SocialPolicy Journal, 43(2), 363-364.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2016). A Paradox of Social Change: How the Quest for Liberation Reproduces Dominance in Higher Education and in the Field of Social Work. Social Work Education: An International Journal, 35(5), pp. 495-505.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2015). Whiteness and White Supremacy in Social Work. In Wright, J. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Work (2nd ed., pp. 569-574). Oxford, U.K.: Elesvier.
  • Yee, J. Y. Hackbusch, C. & Wong, H. (2015). An Anti-Oppression (AO) Framework for Child Welfare in Ontario, Canada: Possibilities for Systemic Change. British Journal of Social Work, 45(2), pp. 474-492.
  • Yee, J. Y. Marshall, Z. & Vo, T.  (2014). Challenging Neo-Colonialism and Essentialism: Incorporating Hybridity into New Conceptualizations of Settlement Service Delivery with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Immigrant Young People. Critical Social Work. 15(1), pp. 88-103.
  • Yee, J. Y. and Wagner, A. (2013). Is Anti-Oppression Teaching in Canadian Schools of Social Work a Form of Neo-Liberalism? Social Work Education. 32(3), pp. 331-348.
  • Wagner, A. and Yee, J. Y. (2011). Anti-Oppression in Higher Education: Implicating Neo-Liberalism. Canadian Social Work Review, 28(1), pp. 89-105.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2008). Canada. In Richard T. Schaefer, Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, and Kiljoong Kenneth Kim (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2008). Racialization. In Richard T. Schaefer, Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, and Kiljoong Kenneth Kim (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2008) Racism. In Richard T. Schaefer, Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, and Kiljoong Kenneth Kim (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2008). Whiteness. In Richard T. Schaefer, Shu-Ju Ada Cheng, and Kiljoong Kenneth Kim (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.

Book chapters:

  • Yee, J. Y. & Dumbrill, G. C. (2022). Evolving theory of whiteness: A journey from W.E.B. Dubois to shame and call-out culture. In S.S. Shaikh & B.A. LeFrancois & T. Macias (Eds.), Critical Social Work Praxis (pp. 294-302). Fernwood Publishing.
  • Yee, J. Y. & Wagner, A.E. (2021).  Tackling Whiteness in the Classroom and Challenging/Shattering the Skills-Based Curriculum Through Anti-Oppression Teaching in Social Work. In Csiernik, R. Hillock, S. (Eds.), Teaching Social Work: Reflections on Pedagogy and Practice. (pp. 56-67). University of Toronto Press.
  • Yee, J. Y. (2017). Carrying Out Research on Whiteness, White Supremacy, and Racialization Processes in Social Service Agencies. In H. Parada and S. Wehbi (Eds.), Re-imagining anti-oppressive social work research (pp. 59-68). Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
  • Yee, J. Y., & Dumbrill, G. C. (2016). Whiteout: Still looking for race in Canadian social work practice. In A. Al-Krenawi, J. R. Graham, & N. Habibov (Eds.), Diversity and social work in Canada (2 ed., pp. 13 37). Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press.
  • Yee, J. Y., Wong, H. & Schlabitz, T.  (2014).  Beyond Inclusion Training: Changing Human Service and Public Organizations.  In M. Cohen and C. Hyde (Eds.), Empowering Workers and Clients for Organizational Change (pp. 135-155).  Chicago, Il:  Lyceum Books, Inc.

Books:

  • Dumbrill, G. C. & Yee, J. Y. (2018). Anti-Oppressive Social Work: Ways of Knowing, Talking and Doing. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press.

  • Dean's Teaching Award, 2017
  • Best Conceptual Article for 2013 – 2014 in Social Work Education: The International Journal
  • Ontario Association of Social Workers Social Work Leaders Award, 2008
  • Professor of the Year Award, 2002