Tanya Shute

Tanya Shute (she/her/elle) is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Laurentian University whose work sits at the intersection of scholarship, community organizing, and social justice movements. Before entering academia, Tanya spent two decades as a front-line social worker and community developer in York Region, working primarily in women’s shelters and community mental health and addictions services. She was deeply involved in the psychiatric survivor movement and served for many years as Executive Director of the Krasman Centre, a leading consumer/survivor organization advancing peer support, rights, and community-led mental health alternatives.

Tanya has also worked extensively in social work education. She was faculty and program coordinator in Seneca College’s Social Service Worker program and played a key role in building new pathways for community-based practice education as the lead curriculum author, program coordinator, and faculty member for Seneca’s Honours Bachelor of Community Mental Health and Addictions and its post-graduate Mental Health Intervention certificate program.

Tanya's (she/her) research program is grounded in community-engaged and movement-accountable approaches to knowledge creation. She works collaboratively with community organizations and grassroots movements to generate research that supports social change, with a focus on 2SLGBTQIA+ health and wellbeing, homelessness and poverty, psychiatric survivor and consumer initiatives, and mutual aid and peer support.

Tanya (she/her) holds a Specialized Honours degree in Public Policy and Administration from York University, a Master of Social Work from Laurentian University, and a PhD in Education from York University.

Tanya’s research program is grounded in community struggle, grassroots knowledge, and the belief that research should be accountable to movements for social change. Much of her work uses participatory and community-led approaches, where community organizations and movement actors shape the questions, methods, and outcomes. Research is not an end in itself but one step in broader processes of community organizing, knowledge mobilization, and social transformation.

Her work is also informed by critical mental health and mad studies perspectives, with a longstanding commitment to amplifying psychiatric survivor knowledge, documenting movement histories, and supporting community-led collective care alternatives to biomedical mental health systems.

Her research focuses on issues identified by communities themselves and is designed to produce tangible change; whether through policy advocacy, public education, or strengthening community-based initiatives. She is currently involved in collaborative research on suburban and rural homelessness, the health and wellbeing of 2SLGBTQIA+ people living in rural, suburban, and small-town contexts, the psychiatric survivor movement and its organizations.

Tanya also conducts research on social work education, with particular attention to power, institutional culture, and issues such as contra-power harassment within professional training environments.

For financial awards, please contact Tanya Shute directly at tg_shute@laurentian.ca and request a CV.

Book Chapters

Shute, T. (2025). The ethics of missed epistemic opportunities: The erosion of independent peer-run organizations in Ontario’s mental health system. In D. Nyaga M. Zangeneh (Eds.), Critical Ethics on Mental Health and Madness, (pp.37-51). Advances in Mental Health and Addiction Series. Springer.

Shute, T. & Kauppi, C.  (2021) “Hidden in plain sight: Exploring the living circumstances of homelessness and at-risk homelessness” in Reclaiming Home [conference proceedings] with J. Charlton Publishing.

Yorke, J., & Shute, T. (2021). Incivility or bullying: Challenges in the social work classroom. In R. Csiernick and S. Hillock (Eds.) Teaching in Social Work (pp.426-456). University of Toronto Press.

Yorke, J., Byrch, L., Ham, M., Craggs, M., & Shute, T. (2016). Queering space in social work: How Simcoe County has moved from queerful to queerious. In S. Hillock & Mulé (Eds.), Queering Social Work Education (pp.227-246). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Peer-Reviewed Journals

Shute, T., & Theodorou, A. (2024). Supporting Ontario’s Consumer/Survivor Initiatives and their importance to the Ontario community mental health and addictions system during the COVID-19 pandemic. In D. Nyaga, R.A. Torres  (Eds.), Reimagining mental health and addiction under the Covid-19 pandemic, (1), (pp.51-56). Advances in Mental Health and Addiction [conference proceedings]. Springer.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58367-4_6

Plante, W., Tufford, L., & Shute, T. “Interventions with survivors of interpersonal trauma: Addressing the role of shame”, submitted to Clinical Social Work Journal November 2020 (accepted with minor revisions October 2021); contributed editing and review.

Shute, T., Peisachovich, E., & Da Silva, C. “A caring approach to vocational education: Supporting students in social work and nursing para-professional programs in community colleges”, submitted to International Journal for Subject in Interdisciplinary Education (accepted, August 2021).

Simpson, J., Yantzi, N., Shute, T., & Watson, S. “Even if it’s flawed, it’s still beautiful: Life lessons learned by adolescents with neurobiological disorders at summer camp”, submitted to Disability and Society, (accepted September 2021); contributed editing, review, and authorship in methodology section.

Smith-Carriere, T., Montgomery, P., Mossey, S., Shute, T., Forchuk, C., & Rodnick. A., (2020). Erosion of social support for disabled people in Ontario: An appraisal of the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) using a human rights framework. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(1), 1-30.

Hall, L., Shute, T., Montgomery, P., Nangia, P., Mossey, S., & Parr, M. (2020). Indigenous fathering and wellbeing: Kinship and decolonial approaches to health research. Diversity in Health Research Journal, 3, 97-112. Doi: 10.28984/drhj.v3i0.302

Hall, L., Pine, U., & Shute, T. (2020). Beyond determinants: Indigenous culture-based approaches to ending violence against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit People. Diversity in Health Research Journal, 3, 1-11. Doi: 10.28984/drhj.v3i0.302

Shute, T., & Hall, L. (2020). Community-based peer sexual health educators: Lessons learned. Diversity in Health Research Journal, 3, 113-124. https://doi.org/10.28984/drhj.v3i0.301

Shute, T. (2018). The health needs and experiences of transgender residents in small and rural areas, Diversity in Health Research Journal, 2, 158-163.

Community Development/Community Organization Papers
Shute (2024, forthcoming). Telling our story: Data collection practices, challenges and implications for the future of Ontario’s Consumer/Survivor Organizations, a technical         report. PeerWorks.

Pasanen, P., Shute, T., Lemieux, S., Price, S., & Wilson, D. (2022, October). Invisible No More: Voices from the Queer Community, Public Health Sudbury & District.
https://www.phsd.ca/health-topics-programs/health-equity/2slgbtq/invisible-no-more-study/

Gomes, J., Shute, T., Bornbaum, M., Minelli, A., Jang, P., & Sylvain, N. (2019). “Experiences of LGBTTGNCQ+ Homeless Youth in York Region: Final Report”, available from: homelesshub.ca

Shute, T. (2018) Transgender Health Needs in North Simcoe/Muskoka: Results from the TransHealth Needs Assessment: The Health Data”, available from: http://www.gilbertcentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Results-from-the-Trans-Health-Needs-Assessment-The-Health-Data.pdf