Dionisio Nyaga
Assistant Professor
Department: School of Social Work
Email: dnyaga@torontomu.ca
Education: BSW, MSW, PhD (University of Â鶹ÊÓƵ, Social Justice Education)
Discipline: Social Work
Areas of Expertise:
- African Indigenous Spiritualities
- African Philosophy
- Critical Anti-Oppressive Theory
- Research & Practice
- Critical Masculinity Studies
- Critical Quantitative & Qualitative Research
- Psychic Analysis
Research Interests
African Indigenous Epistemologies; Critical Reflexive Research Methodologies; Ethical Duties & Responsibilities in Research; Mental Health & Substance Use; Social Work Teaching & Learning
Dr. Dionisio Nyaga is a distinguished scholar, educator, and community-engaged practitioner whose work is situated at the intersection of critical social work, social justice education, and transformative research methodologies. His scholarship is marked by sustained engagement with questions of ethics, power, and knowledge production, with particular attention to anti-oppressive and anti-colonial practice, Afrocentric and Black studies, gender and masculinity studies, community development, and methodologies of care. Across his research, teaching, and public scholarship, Dr. Nyaga examines how structures of race, coloniality, and inequality shape institutional life, policy, and social relations, while advancing more humane, reflexive, and justice-oriented ways of knowing, relating, and practicing.
Dr. Nyaga has contributed to a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship on critical research ethics, Black and Afrocentric methodologies, masculinity, migration, Indigenous and diasporic knowledge systems, and the social conditions that shape mental health, care, and belonging. He co-edited Critical Research Methodologies: Ethics and Responsibilities and co-founded the Journal of Critical Research Methodologies, roles that reflect his longstanding commitment to intellectually rigorous, ethically grounded, and socially accountable inquiry.
His publications and collaborative projects bring social work into generative conversation with philosophy, education, decolonial thought, and community-based research, and together they testify to a scholarly practice defined by depth, reflexivity, and psychic engagement. In both his teaching and his scholarship, Dr. Nyaga is deeply committed to cultivating critical dialogue, fostering intellectual seriousness, and advancing relational approaches to knowledge that honor lived experience, local epistemologies, and the political responsibilities of research. Through this work, he has emerged as a respected and compelling voice in contemporary debates on justice, ethics, and transformative social inquiry.
| Course Code | Course |
| SK 8104 | Practice Research Seminar |
| SWP 538 | Social Work Research |
Teaching Interests
- Critical Anti-Oppression
- Cultural Studies
- Gender & Masculinity Studies
- Indigenous Teaching Methodologies
- Transnational & Diaspora Studies
Scholarly Calling
For a long time, I have sought to understand how power operates and how it empowers some people while disenfranchising others. This pursuit has led me to pay particular attention to the ways power is used to impose psychic forms of social death on those who are marginalized and pushed to the edges of society.
My personal experiences with social systems have driven my research into how accent discrimination is employed to deny Black African people access to necessities of life and opportunities for social participation. Anti-Black racism within education, mental health, and psychiatric care systems has been a central area of my research interest. As an educator, I am informed by a range of frameworks, including critical anti-oppressive approaches, that help uncover the transformative potential of social justice in teaching and learning. These frameworks create space for diverse perspectives and voices from marginalized students, contributing to the decolonization of the classroom. I believe that we speak through breathing. When we breathe, we express ourselves in ways that can transform how we understand ourselves and our relationships with others.
Through sound and student expression, I view learning as a spiritual practice, one that releases transformative energy into the classroom and fosters deeper connection, reflection, and collective growth.
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