Vilmara Lucas
Vilmara Lucas, PhD Candidate
vilmara.lucas@mail.utoronto.ca
Research Interests
- Critical and Afrocentric Clinical Social Work
- Social work education, pedagogy and creative teaching methods
- Black and Immigrant Mental Health
- Immigration and labour market
- Racism as a Social Determinant of Health
- Social work with migrants, refugees and diasporic communities
- Arts-based qualitative methods
Biography
Vilmara Lucas is a PhD Candidate at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto. She is a Black-Latina scholar, educator and psychotherapist with more than a decade of social work practice. Her clinical and community practice spans psychotherapy, intimate partner violence counselling, therapeutic group facilitation, case management, emergency services for women, community development, knowledge mobilization and mental health program development, much of it alongside immigrant communities. This experience informs her scholarship as a whole, connecting practice, research and pedagogy through a shared commitment to social justice.
Her SSHRC-funded dissertation uses an Intersectional Social Determinants of Health framework to examine how anti-Black racism and xenophobia in Canada’s post-pandemic labour market affect the mental health of Black economic immigrants. The study positions racism as a Social Determinant of Health. Its findings inform human rights protections in the workplace, labour market policies that sustain the immigrant workforce vital to Canada’s economic growth, and clinical practice responsive to the needs of Black immigrant workers.
Beyond her dissertation, Vilmara has contributed to a range of community-engaged research projects centring the voices of youth, families and communities experiencing marginalization. Her research experience includes participatory, qualitative and arts-based methods such as body mapping and digital storytelling, with a focus on healing, wellbeing and social justice.
Vilmara is passionate about social work pedagogy. She has taught required Master of Social Work (MSW) clinical practice courses at the University of Toronto and Child and Youth Care courses at Toronto Metropolitan University. She builds her classrooms as communities of learning grounded in relational safety, accountability and joy. Students take active roles through creative, experiential methods. This approach has produced tangible results, with course evaluations consistently reflecting high student engagement and success.
Dissertation
Exploring the Mental Health Challenges of Black Economic Immigrants in the Post-Pandemic Job Market
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work, University of Toronto, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, (anticipated June 2027)
Master of Social Work, York University
Bachelor of Social Work, Toronto Metropolitan University
Social Service Worker Diploma – Immigrants and Refugees, Seneca College