About the SSW Visiting International Scholar

We would like to introduce you to this summer's Visiting International Scholar, Andrew Hoang from Hong Kong University. Andrew will be on campus during term 2.

Hello everyone! My name is Andrew Hoang, and I am entering my second year of doctoral studies in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. I will be coming to Smith as a visiting scholar during the second summer term, and am looking forward to meeting the Smith community during my stay!

I completed a Master of Social Work in integrated practice with individuals, families and groups at Wilfrid Laurier University. I completed local and international practicums as a school social worker in Waterloo, Canada and as a personal development school counselor, in Shenzhen, China.

I am grateful that my identity (particularly as a queer Asian-Canadian) continues to crystallize throughout my social work journey, as I encounter social work in its various forms. I think that the ways I have reflected upon questions of identity, belonging and dislocation in my life have cultivated a desire within me to explore what could happen when I refract social work research in a way that flows more from my center.

My dissertation is a comparative ethnographic project that explores school social work as an institution and practice in Hong Kong and Toronto. I am interested in the various ways that school social workers dis/engage with ethno-racialization, gender and sexuality issues, and how these issues become socially constructed cross-nationally. Theoretically, I am interested in how issues of diversity, equity and social justice appear phenomenologically, and the possibilities for/barriers to politicizing a domain of social work that is predominantly seen as clinical practice.