York women’s basketball has a proud legacy, shaped by athletes who have left a distinctive mark on the team. This season, that legacy has been carried forward by a team that includes all-star player, Kiara Leveridge, a soon‑to‑be graduate of the Social Work program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS). Known not only for her accomplishments on the court but also for her thoughtful, critically engaged approach to her academic work, Leveridge embodies the values central to both her program and the York experience.

Leveridge’s dedication on and off the court has made her one of the most impactful players in York Lions history. As she closes out her final season with a milestone playoff victory and a remarkable list of achievements, her story reflects athletic excellence, resilience, leadership and deep community engagement. A huge congratulations from all of us at LA&PS!

Kinnon Ross MacKinnon, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, was featured in two recent articles in The New York Times. The first announced a $2 million dollar malpractice verdict that awarded a 22-year-old woman damages for receiving a gender-affirming double mastectomy when she was a 16 year old transgender boy, later detransitioning. MacKinnon has suggested that a majority of transgender people report that medical transition improves the quality of their lives. The second article was about a new announcement by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The medical group recommended that its members refrain from performing gender transition surgeries on patients until they reach age 19. MacKinnon said that the group’s position reflects the growing political backlash over gender-affirming care for minors in addition to liability concerns for practitioners in the field.

Kinnon R. MacKinnon, MSW, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work. He studies transition-related care, how it is delivered by care providers, and how it is experienced by gender-diverse people. He is the principal investigator of a mixed-methods study examining lived experiences of detransition and gender fluidity. He co-writes newsletter on Substack.

Read the full articles in The New York Times (behind paywall):

Read additional input from MacKinnon on the topic of transgender care and detransition in (behind paywall).

Soma Chatterjee, a professor in the School of Social work, has published a new book that she will be discussing at a series of upcoming events. Her book, Skills to Build the Nation: Immigrant Labour Market and Canadian Nationalism (University of Toronto Press, 2025), explores how ideas of skill and training shaped immigrant integration practices in post-liberalization Canada. Chatterjee argues that integration of skilled immigrants has increasingly become contingent on performing an elusive – and often assimilatory – form of “Canadianness” despite Canada’s reliance on their expertise.

Across three events, Chatterjee will introduce the book’s core arguments, share insights from her archival research, and engage students, scholars and community members in discussion.

Narratives of Movement: Centering  Migrant Women's Voices in Research and Resistance
Graduate Student Symposium
Friday, Feb. 27
Kaneff Tower Room 626 

As part of the larger, day-long Graduate Student Symposium, Chatterjee will deliver a hands-on workshop titled, From Thesis to Book: A Practical Guide for Emerging Scholars, drawing from her forthcoming book Skills to Build the Nation: Immigrant Labour Market and Canadian Nationalism. This session offers an accessible, demystifying look at how graduate students and early career researchers can transform a thesis into a publishable monograph.     

Learn more and register for the day . 

Monday, March 9  from 5 to 7 p.m.  
Nexus Lounge, 12th floor, OISE, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON 

In this talk, Chatterjee will discuss the intellectual foundations of her book, which originated as her doctoral thesis at OISE. She challenges the widespread assumption that skilled immigrants’ labour market integration is simply a public policy problem solvable through training or remedial solutions.  Drawing from her archival research on the federal skilled labour policies between 1967 and 2016, she argues that persistent de-skilling of international trained professionals serves to uphold a productive gap between immigrants’ legal status and their substantive membership in Canadian society.

The session will be chaired by Dr. Kiran Mirchandani, Professor, Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. 

Learn more and register .

Thursday, March 12 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto, ON

The public launch of Skills to Build the Nation will bring Chatterjee in conversation with �첥��Ƶ faculty members Shirin Shahrokni, assistant professor of sociology; Lalaie Ameeriar, associate professor of anthropology; and Ethel Tungohan, associate professor of politics. Refreshments will be served. This event is endorsed by the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, the York Centre for Asian Research and the Global Labour Research Centre. 

Four professors from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) have been awarded funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), receiving Connection Grants and Partnership Engage Grants.

Jake Pyne from the School of Social Work received $23,498 in funding for his project No for now: Building educator capacity to simultaneously support transgender students and parent-child relationships. The project will provide tools to educators to support transgender students and their families.

Kelly Thomson and co-applicant Marcela Porporato from the School of Administrative Studies received $24,988 in funding for their project Gender and Microinclusion in STEM Workgroups. They will be researching gender inclusion in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) work environments, working in partnership with Santex in Argentina.

Hannah Johnston from the School of Human Resource Management and sava saheli singh from the Faculty of Education received $24,750 in funding for their project Strengthening Educators' Collective Capacity to Bargain for Digital Rights. Working with applicant Vera Khovanskaya from the University of Toronto and in partnership with the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, they will be researching how educators can advocate for digital rights in the procurement and use of educational technologies.

Read the full story in YFile.

Assistant professor Kinnon R. MacKinnon has written an opinion piece for The New York Times  that examines the Trump administration’s campaign against transgender rights. The administration has been highlighting many stories about transgender people who have regretted transitioning, after cancelling $800 million in grant funding for LGBTQ research. MacKinnon shares findings from his research team’s study which was designed to better understand reasons for detransition. The survey asked participants about the factors that contributed to their decision to detransition, and responses included change in gender identity, realizing gender dysphoria was related to something else, lack of familial support, mental health related factors, bans on gender care, and a range of other reasons. While many participants reported that they regretted transitioning, others detransitioned due to lack of support or bans on gender care. The study also revealed that gender identity can evolve over time. MacKinnon notes the importance of researching this complex issue to provide the best possible care.

Kinnon R. MacKinnon is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work. He holds a BSW from �첥��Ƶ, an MSW from Toronto Metropolitan University and a PhD in Public Health Sciences from Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His research interests include policy, community-based research, critical mental health, political economy, gender care ethics and practice.

Read the full article in (behind paywall).

A research team in the School of Social Work, led by assistant professor Kinnon Ross MacKinnon, has developed a new protocol to identify and remove fraudulent responses from web-based surveys.

The team noticed suspicious responses while recruiting for a research study on detransition experiences among LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada and the U.S. They started to apply a new method to filter out fraudulent responses from bots or scammers. Their protocol excludes questionable responses based on a list of criteria including geolocation, low reCAPTCHA scores, duplicate IP addresses and more.

The team’s method may become a new best practice for studies involving hard-to-reach populations. MacKinnon has published a template for researchers based on this new approach in the .

Read the full story in YFile.

In the fall of 2023, School of Social Work professor embarked on a fascinating journey with the undergraduate students from the course Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees. Exploring the complex landscapes of global migration through readings and other media, the students sought to understand the deeper reasons behind why people move and how these movements shape urban diasporic environments such as the city of Toronto. The goal was to uncover the ‘crossings’ that can foster solidarity and build meaningful relationships between diverse immigrant communities and Indigenous nations. 13 students volunteered their field trip pictures and journals for the photo essay, , highlighting how immigrants themselves and various organizations, artists and community builders are responding to movements, nurturing connections and also revealing alienation and precarity.

By sharing the teaching and learning insights from this , Professor Chatterjee hopes to spark meaningful conversations with colleagues and students within the �첥��Ƶ community and beyond.