My education work is grounded in my commitment to solidarity with liberation struggles. I started teaching in community settings in 2008, and in the post-secondary system in 2014. I am interested in relational online education and building co-learning spaces from an aspirationally anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, disability justice-oriented abolitionist lens. I have been the primary investigator and project manager on several community-driven participatory action research projects guided by people surviving social work and the criminal legal system, and occasionally write academic articles. From 2014 - 2026, I taught about harm reduction, "mental health," and collective care in the Social Service Worker program at George Brown College in Tsí Tkaròn:to. To hear more about any of this work, 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 against the grain of professionalization 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 community work grounded in and emerging from lived/living experience and in opposition to carceral social work.
(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.