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Denise McLane-Davison

Denise McLane-Davison

Professor, Graduate Program Director
EducationPhD, MA
Phone416-979-5000, ext. 554788
Areas of ExpertiseBlack feminist/womanist/Africana epistemologies; Womanist/African-centered pedagogy; Black spatial/public humanities

Denise McLane-Davison is an award-winning Afrofuturistic womanist social work leader and educator. Her teaching pedagogy, research, scholarship, and leadership are interconnected and inclusive of Black feminist/womanist/Africana (BFWA) epistemologies; centering critical race, womanist theologian, and other emancipatory praxis to disrupt systems of structural oppression, while fostering innovative strategies of transformation, reconciliation and liberation.

McLane-Davison is a visual storyteller utilizing cultural memory and the intentional centering of African diasporic history and culture in the digital humanities genre to provide an interdisciplinary and intergenerational knowledge bank for public and academic scholars through her training in Black digital humanities (BDH) and Black spatial humanities.  

McLane-Davison has an outstanding research background and a fulsome and prolific publication record; securing close to two million dollars in research funding in the USA as a principal investigator. Her projects have covered a range of areas, notably women鈥檚 wellness, womanist leadership, HIV/AIDS (usually focusing on racialized or Black communities) and historical retrospective studies focused on the Black social work movement. Her research has filled significant gaps in knowledge, centering strength-based epistemologies and highlighting how Blackness is experienced at the intersection of personal, communal and political.  

McLane-Davison鈥檚 work on womanist research and pedagogy has been translated into three languages (Twi, Portuguese and Hebrew) and has been presented internationally in many countries. She is the 2020 Faculty Women of Color in The Academy Zenobia L. Hikes Teaching-Research National Award Winner, and past National Association of Social Workers-Maryland Chapter Social Work Educator of The Year, as well as the recipient of The Distinguished Achievement in Social Work Education Award from the National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc. 

McLane-Davison is a graduate of Illinois State University, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, and The Whitney M. Young, Jr. School of Social Work, Clark Atlanta University, USA.    

Teaching responsibilities:

  • SK 8214: Anti Black Racism: Roots, History, and Emergent Perspectives 
  • SK 8102: Anti-Oppression Responses to Marginalization, Policy and Practice
  • SWP 402: Social Policy Social Inclusion

Teaching interests: 

  • Womanist pedagogy
  • Liberatory praxis
  • Black spatial/digital humanities

Research interests:

  • African-centered futuristic social work
  • The Black social work movement
  • The strength of Black families and communities
  • Qualitative and womanist epistemological research

Funded research projects:

  • McLane-Davison, D. (2020). Mapping Black Thought and Resistance:  Digital Storytelling Through Primary Data Resources of  the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) 1968-1978 and  The HistoryMakers Digital Archive .The HistoryMakers 2020 Digital Humanities Fellowship Award. Chicago, IL.
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2016-17; 2018-19). Urban women on the Rise Leadership Program. Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic Regional Foundation, Inc. Baltimore, MD.
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2014-2019). Results-Based Accountability: Casey-Morgan Partnership. Annie E. Casey Foundation. Baltimore, MD.
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2017). The Sankofa Recovery Project: An anthology of the National Association of Black Social Workers and the Black Social Work Movement. Morgan State University Faculty Enhancement Grant.

  • McLane-Davison, D. (contributor). (2021, January 29). Part II: Addressing Racism from within the Social Work Profession: Reflections on our Past and Present. Social Work, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice: Reckoning with Our History, Interrogating our Present, Re-Imagining our Future Symposium.
  • Jaggers,G. & McLane-Davison, D. (Contributor). (2021, February 1).(No. 38). In Doin鈥橳he Work: Frontline Stories for Social Change, Shimon Cohen (producer)
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2018). Celebrating our legacy: The fiftieth anniversary multi-media archives exhibit at The National Association of Black Social Workers Fiftieth Annual Conference. National Association of Black Social Workers, Inc. Collection, Beulah M. Davis Special Collections Room, Earl S. Richardson Library, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland.

Books:

  • McLane-Davison, D. (in press). 鈥�African-centered social work鈥�. Oxford Bibliographies Online:Social Work. Oxford University Press. Publications.

Chapters:

  • Schiele, J. & McLane-Davison, D. (in press). White supremacy and American social policy: Implications for racism-centered policy practice In The Grand Challenges of Racism. Oxford Press.
  • Brice, T.S., McLane-Davison, D. & Brice, T. (2022).  Civil rights. Encyclopedia of Social Work. NASW Press.
  • Brice, T.S. & McLane-Davison, D. (2020) The strength of Black families: The elusive ties of perspective and praxis in social work education. In Amy Mendenhall and Michelle Mohr Carney (eds) . Creative Commons Open Access.
  • McLane-Davison, D. & Hewitt, W. (2016). Inner city blues: HIV/AIDS and the urban social worker. In Wells-Wilbon, R., McPhatter, A., & H.O.Vakalahi (Eds.). Social Work Practice with African Americans in Urban Environments. Springer Publishing. New York. pp 185-203.

Journal articles:

  • Ortega-Williams, A. & McLane-Davison, D. (2021). Wringing out the 鈥渨hitewash鈥�:Confronting the hegemonic epistemologies of social work cannons (disrupting the reproduction of white normative) Special Issue: Dismantling White Supremacy in Social Work Education. Advances in Social Work, 21 (2/3), 566-587.
  • Bowie, S.L. & McLane-Davison, D. (2021).  Readiness for graduate social work education: Does an undergraduate social work major make a difference? Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 4(4) 360-372.
  • Burdell-Wilson, D , Solomon, T, & McLane-Davison, D. (2020).  . Journal of Social Work and Public Health, 35(7) 617-632
  • Simmons, C., Weiss, E., Schwartz, S. & McLane-Davison, D. (2020). Job satisfaction: A Positive attribute of work-family integration for female social work faculty. Social Work Education.
  • McLane-Davison, D., Allen-Milton, S., Archibald, P., & Holmes, R. (2019). . Race and Justice, 9(1),8鈥�21.
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2018). .  Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. 16 (2).
  • McLane-Davison, D., Quinn, C., Hardy, K., & R. Smith. (2017) .  Journal of Social Work Education.
  • McLane-Davison. D. (2017). . Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment. 27 (5) 474-486.
  • McLane-Davison, D. (2016). Affilia: Journal of Women in Social Work. 31 (1) 55-69.

  • The Zenobia L. Hikes Woman of Color in the Academy Teaching/Research Award, Faculty Women of Color in the Academy Conference, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2020.
  • United States Congressional Citation in Recognition of Social Work Educator of The Year Award, National Association of Social Workers, Maryland Chapter, 2018.
  • Educator of the Year Award, National Association of Social Workers, Maryland Chapter, 2018.
  • Distinguished Achievement in Social Work Education Award, National Association of Black Social Workers, 49th Annual Conference, Washington, D.C, 2017.
  • Mentorship Award, Council on The Status of Women in Social Work, Council on Social Work Education, 2017.