Heather Fikowski

Heather Fikowski, MSW, RSW is a Social Work Instructor in the Health and Human Services Program at Aurora College, Yellowknife/North Slave and she represents the Northwest Territories (NWT) on the Executive of the Canadian Rural Health Research Society.  Heather has lived and practiced social work in the NWT for the last 14 years and she also maintains a clinical social work practice in Yellowknife. She is a strong advocate for social justice issues in the NWT and is a current member of the Coalition Against Family Violence NWT and the Association of Social Workers in Northern Canada. Her research interests include women’s issues, family violence, and rural and remote social work practice. As Co-Academic Investigator of a five year (2011/2016) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded qualitative research project, titled “Rural and Northern Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence”, Heather is breaking the silence on intimate partner violence in our Northern communities. She brings a critical social work lens and an action oriented approach to this research with the goal of utilizing the results to share information, increase awareness and affect social policies to help move toward non-violence in Canada’s North. Heather has presented her research findings in all three Territories, in Edmonton, AB at the Canadian Rural Health Research Conference and in Oulu, Finland at the Congress for Circumpolar Health. She has also been invited to present at the Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development 2016, to be held in June, in Seoul, Korea where she will bring a Canadian and Northern perspective to the discussion of the theoretical and practical issue of “Promoting the Dignity and Worth of People”.