i currently teach about harm reduction, community mental health, and social change in the Social Service Worker program at George Brown Polytechnic. my education work is grounded in my own living experience of Madness and disability, my former front-line social service practice, and my commitment to solidarity with people whose drug use is criminalized. i've been teaching online since 2020 and have mentored others in community-oriented remote pedagogy. i am interested in interdependence and collective care within and outside the classroom and aspire to teach from an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, disability justice-oriented abolitionist lens, to the degree this is possible in a colonial institution. i'm always looking to learn from others!
i have an MA and PhD from the OISE at the University of Toronto. i have been the academic lead on several community-driven participatory action research projects and occasionally write academic articles. in the past few years, i've done some organizing and journalistic work on disability justice with radical educator and organizer Remy Klein. i'm currently (slowly) working on a book.
if you want to collaborate or chat, please get in touch at griffin.epstein@gmail.com. i'd love to hear from you.
(2020 - 2023)
Supporting Peer Work was a research and advocacy project supporting the disruptive and transformative practices of people doing care work within their own communities undertaken in partnership with Working for Change and the Toronto Drop-In Network and guided by Michael Nurse, Maria Scotton, Suwaida Farah, Andre Hermanstyne, Lindsay Jennings, Madelyn Gold, Dawnmarie Harriott, Julia Walter and Les Harper.
(2018 - 2019)
EPSW was a community-engaged research project steered by Amita Agrawal, Sarah Alvo, Deshawna Dookie, Remy Klein and Lo Goldsmith designed to support educators in integrating meaningful curriculum on the importance of social service work grounded in and emerging from lived/living experience, against oppressive social work structures.
(2016 - 2017)
Creating Change was a strategic planning project that aimed to synthesize dissertation research on gentrification, colonial violence, white supremacy and social work undertaken at the Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre and guided and co-written by Tyde Irma Cambridge, Peter G. Martin, Bernice Sampson, John Hovannisyan, Omid Zareian, Bernadette Timson and Hume Cronyn.
For more information, or access to paywalled publications, get in touch.