Viveka Ichikawa
Viveka Ichikawa, PhD, MSW, RSW
viveka.ichikawa@mail.utoronto.ca
Research Interests
- Mixed-race identity
- Critical Clinical Social Work
- Critical international social work
- Social Work with migrants, refugees and diaspora
- Anti-racist social work practice and pedagogy
- Trauma-informed social work practice, research, and pedagogy
- Cross-cultural couple counselling
Biography
Viveka Ichikawa (she/her) has pursued her personal and professional journey as an immigrant in Tkaronto. Viveka has over ten years of experience working with racialized and LGBTQ+ newcomers, immigrants, and refugee claimants as an individual and couple psychotherapist. Her clinical, research, and pedagogical pursuits are firmly rooted in social justice and human rights frameworks, guided by anti-racist and anti-oppressive principles.
Since 2017, Viveka has been involved in numerous national and global social justice-oriented research projects. Viveka co-led Japan’s first national-level study on people with multiple racial and ethnic roots, examining experiences of racism, microaggressions, and their impacts on mental health.
Viveka’s doctoral research with mixed-race persons in Canada employs critical narrative inquiry and reflexive thematic analysis to illuminate how embodied colonial logics of race, fixed, monolithic, and dismissive of ambiguity, fluidity, and the nuances of human diversity, dismiss a growing population who exist between racial lines.
Viveka has taught both undergraduate and graduate-level social work courses across four Canadian universities both in-person and online. She is deeply committed to advocating for students from diverse backgrounds.
Dissertation
Lost in dichotomy: Everyday experiences of (mis)racialization among mixed race persons with Japanese and White ancestries in Canada
Education
- Ph.D. Candidate, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto
- M.SW. Specialization: Social Justice and Diversity with a collaborative program in Ethnic and Pluralism Studies, Factor Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto
- BSW. and Early Childhood Education, Tokyo University of Social Welfare
- B.A. Psychology, University of Victoria