Assistant Professor

School of Social Work

St. John's College,
Room: J-4005
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Phone: (709) 864-8150
Email:  jparsons@mun.ca

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Janice E. Parsons is an Assistant Professor with Memorial University's School of Social Work. She is a proud Newfoundlander with deep roots in Newfoundland and Labrador, and humbly acknowledges that she is a settler on unceded lands of Indigenous peoples.

Janice currently teaches in the areas of critical thinking, theory and ethics for practice. She also has teaching experience in: practice with individuals, families, groups and communities, introduction to social work, leadership for social justice, social work supervision and field instruction. Janice is a passionately committed teacher and has mentored graduate students in  Memorial's Teaching Skills Enhancement Program, as well as colleagues. She has also contributed to inter-professional education and is a Faculty Associate with Memorial's Centre for Collaborative Health Professional Education.

She holds a Graduate Diploma in Social Administration and an M.S.W. (Area of Concentration: Individual, Family and Group Treatment) from Wilfrid Laurier University, a B.S.W. (Honours) from University of Windsor, and a B.A. (Sociology) from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her academic work follows social work practice, primarily in the fields of child welfare and developmental (dis)Abilities, including both direct practice and administration.

Janice's areas of research and scholarly interest include: marginalization, oppression, poverty, social class, gender, identity, social inclusion, lone mothers, welfare, social work education, social work supervision and research ethics. Her work employs anti-oppression, feminist, and postmodern perspectives and qualitative research designs. She has a long-term commitment to working with people experiencing poverty, especially lone parents and was lead investigator for the St. John’s site of a SSHRC Community University Research Alliance (CURA), entitled “Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion”, a national longitudinal study.

Professor Parsons is former Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs, and former Field Education Coordinator with the School, as well as former Chair, Interdisciplinary Committee for Ethics in Human Research (ICEHR), at Memorial. She is a Registered Social Worker and holds membership in the Newfoundland and Labraor Association of Social Workers.
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Selected Publications:

Peer Reviewed
• Gustafson, D.L.; Parsons, J.E. & Gillingham, B. (2019). Writing to transgress: Knowledge production in feminist participatory action research [80 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20(2), Art. 17. http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.2.3164. 
• Gustafson, D. L., Swan, T., Gillingham, B., & Parsons, J. E. (2016). Complexities of negotiating power when re-constructing stories about lone mothers. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 31(3), 303–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109915586828
• Parsons, J. E. (2008). Life chances, choices and identity: Single mothers in post-secondary education. Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, 32(2), 136-46.

Book Chapter
• Gustafson, D.L., Parsons, J.E., Meaney, P. & Winsor, C. ( 2017). There is nothing wrong with me. I am a product of your system. Mental health and lone mothers in Newfoundland. In N. Kaplan Myrth & L. Hanson. (Eds.) Much madness, divinest sense. Lawrencetown, NS: Pottersfield Press.