Cassandra Hanrahan
PhD, RSW, Associate Professor
School of Social Work, Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University
Dr. Cassandra Hanrahan is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. Cassandra’s research on human animal interactions and animal informed social work urges us to reconceptualize the purpose and practice of social work today – broadening the circle of compassion and incorporating sustainability as a core value. For more than a decade, Cassandra has been teaching independent studies on animal assisted interventions, and animal-assisted social work, a term she coined in her co-authored 2020 book chapter by the same name in Critical Clinical Social Work: Counter storying for Social Justice. More recently, she developed an undergraduate elective course on Animals, People & Environments in Social Work for the social work program, Dalhousie University. By raising awareness of anthropocentrism and the prescience of a critique of humanism in social work, Cassandra advocates new ontologies of being and becoming.
