Marion Brown

Biography

Marion Brown (she/her) is a social worker and educator with over 20 years of experience in facilitating meaningful conversations in community and university settings. Marion began teaching at the Dalhousie School of Social Work in 2002 and in 2020 was appointed Associate Dean Academic in the Faculty of Health. 

Marion has worked in a variety of settings including community based non-profit programs, clinical counselling practice, and assessment services, in roles from frontline to supervisory. Her practice has focused on community advocacy and therapeutic responses regarding sexualized violence, discrimination, mental health, and institutional settings, on levels both individual and systemic.  Marion has taught in the undergraduate and graduate social work programs, on campus and online. Grounded in relational processes, she uses critical pedagogies, weaving analyses of power and advocacy into politicized teaching & learning processes. In 2019 she was awarded the Canadian Association of Social Work Distinguished Service Award and she is the recipient of the 2024 Dalhousie Alumni Association Award of Excellence for Teaching.

Marion’s areas of research and writing include projects focussed on universal design for learning, culturally responsive pedagogies, trauma informed learning environments, interprofessional education and practice, and health equity. 

As Associate Dean Academic in the Faculty of Health Marion is responsible for strategic leadership in program & curriculum development, implementation, evaluation, & continuous improvement for academic & scholarly innovation. 

Research 

Co-Principal Investigator: Resilience in the post-secondary context: An exploration of students' experiences May 2024 – May 2027
Jennifer Thannhauser (Co-Principal Investigator)
Funding body: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Total: $178,000

Co-Investigator: Queering digital connections: Exploring the impacts of technology and the COVID-19 pandemic on older 2SLGBTQ+ adults’ friendships, relationships, and communities
Matthew Numer (Principal Investigator) Sep. 2022 – May 2024
Funding Sources: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Total: $75,000

Co-investigator: From perspectives to practice: Drawing on narratives to understand, create, and establish psychological safety in interprofessional simulation-based education from an equitable, diverse, and inclusive lens May 2021 - May 2024Kelly Lackie (Principal Investigator)
Funding Source: Research Nova Scotia
Total: $59,912

Co-Investigator: Exploration of the competencies required to facilitate interprofessional education: A JBI scoping review Feb. 2023 - Dec. 2024
Kelly Lackie (Principal Investigator)
Funding Sources: Dalhousie University: Faculty of Health Research & Development grant
Total: $4,912

Co-Investigator: Representing whom? Citizen engagement in Cancer research
Yukiko Asada (Principal Investigator) Feb. 2022 - Feb. 2023
Funding Source: Research Nova Scotia
Total: $10,000

Co-investigator: Art & Justice: An arts-based and Indigenous-led intervention for strengthening mental health & wellbeing for people affected by the Canadian carceral system
Helen Brown (Principal Investigator) Aug. 2021 - Aug. 2022
Funding Source: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Total: $100,000

Co-investigator: Evaluating the Impact of Policies and Mapping a Way Forward for Health Professional Learners in a Pandemic May 2021 - Sep. 2022
Kelly Lackie & Tara Sampalli (Co-Principal Investigators)
Funding Source: Dalhousie University + Nova Scotia Health
Total: $74,880

Publications 

Brown, M., Affoo, R., Crane, K., Gallant, K., Gillis, E., Moody, E. & Tait, B. (submitted). Holistic evaluation of teaching: Policies, possibilities & pitfalls. Submitted to Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching. 

Brown, M., Isenor, J., Packer, T., Jaswal, S.K., Embrett, M. FitzGerald, E.A., Lehman, M.J., Christian E., Marshall, E., Martin  Misener, R., Sampalli, T., Zed, J. & Parsons-Leigh, J. (submitted). Essentially invisible: The experience of social workers and pharmacists during the COVID-19 pandemic. SSM: Qualittive Research in Health.

Tait, B., Beagen, B., Brown, M., MacDonald, J., Officer, S. & Sood, V. (submitted). Time, training, technology, and talking: A faculty survey about equity strategies in health professions curricula. Advances in Health Sciences Education.

Lackie, K., Doucette, H., Pendergast, N., Brown, M., Price, S., Andrews, C., Knowledge, skills, attitudes and/or competencies necessary to facilitate psychologically safe interprofessional education: a scoping review protocol. (submitted). JBI Evidence Synthesis. 

Lackie, K., Taktehchoobi, N., Embrett, M., Field, S., Lane, J., Brown, M., MacKenzie, D., Huo, B., MacMillan, K.  & Martin-Misener, N. (in press). Recommendations to mitigate future pandemic impacts on health professions education: Lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. In C. Dietzel, S. Amiry, & S. Jaffer, (Eds.). Surviving and thriving: Promoting health and well-being during and after COVID-19. Peter Lang.

O'Shea, B., Feicht, R., Brown, M. & Numer, M. (in press). Beyond the label: Understanding perceptions of victims and survivors and the societal implications of sxual violence labels. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. 

Lackie, K., Miller, S., Brown, M., Mireault, A., Helwig, M., Beatty, L., Picketts, L., Stilwell, P. & Houk, S. (2024). Interprofessional collaboration between health professional learners when breaking bad news: A scoping review of teaching approaches. JBI Evidence Synthesis, (1071-1102).

O'Shea, B., Feicht, R., Brown, M., & Numer, M. (2024). Rethinking sexual violence labels: exploring the impact of ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ discourse. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 15(1).

Embrett, M., Packer, T., Fitzgerald, E., Jaswall, S., Lehman, M., Brown, M., Burge, F., Christian, E., Isenor, J.E., Gard Marshall, E., Martin-Misener, R., Sampalli, T., Zed, J. & Parsons Leigh, J. (2023). The impact of COVID-19 on primary care physicians and nurses in Nova Scotia. CMAJ Open.

Thomas Bernard, W., Issari, S., Willis, R., Symonds, B. & Brown, M. (2023). From seed to impact: Stories of struggle, resistance, and resilience in the fight for justice. Canadian Woman Studies.

MacDonald, J.E., Brown, M., Jones, S. (2022). Social Policy Across Social Identities. In B. McKenzie (Ed.), Connecting Policy to Practice in the Human Services (5th ed.) (pp. 272-290). Oxford University Press.

Asada, Y., Brown, M., McNally, M., Murphy, A., Urquhart, R. & Warner, G. (2022). Personal responsibility for health: Exploring together with lay persons. Public Health Ethics, 1-15. 

Lackie, K., Miller, S., Ayn, C., Brown, M., Helwig, M., Houk, S., Beatty, L. (2021). Interprofessional collaboration between health professional learners when breaking bad news: A scoping review protocol. JBI Evidence Synthesis. 

Breneol, S., Rose, H., Brown, M., Bishop, A. & Mitchell, C. (2021). Exploring the health care utilization of children and youth in care of child welfare: A retrospective matched cohort study. Submitted to Canadian Family Physician.

Hayward, K., Brown, M., Pendergast, N., Nicholson, M., Newell, J., Fancy, T. & Cameron, H. (2021). IPE via online education: Pedagogical pathways spanning the distance. Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, 100447 - 100447. 

Asada, Y., Urquhart, R., Brown, M., Warner, G., McNally, M. & Murphy, A. (2020). Troutville: Where people discuss fairness issues. Canadian Journal of Bioethics, 3(1).

Brown, M. (2020). Parent and teen relationships. In V. Enns (Ed.), Counselling in relationships: Insights for helping families develop healthy connections (pp. 1-33). Canada: ACHIEVE Publishing.

Brown. M. (2020). Critical clinical approaches with girls and their experiences of sexualized violence. In C. Brown & J. MacDonald (Eds.), Critical Clinical Social Work: Counterstorying for Social Justice (pp. 33-79). Canada: Canadian Scholars Press.

Hawke, L.D., Darnay, K., Khaleghi, M. Relihan, J., Barbic, S., Lachance, L., Ben-David, S., Brown, M., Iyer, S., Chaim, G., Soklaridis, S., Kidd, S., Halsall, T., Mathias, S., Henderson, J. (2020). Enhancing researcher capacity to engage youth in research: Researchers’ engagement experiences, barriers, and capacity development priorities, Health Expectations, 00, 1-9.