Ruxandra Mihaela Gheorghe
Biographic Data
| ID | 4198773 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruxandra Mihaela Gheorghe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruxandra Mihaela |
| FAMILY NAME | Gheorghe |
| SIGNATURE | GHEORGHE R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Carleton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7523-4376 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
“Too Close to Home”
This article explores how women social workers understand and experience gender-based countertransference (GBCT) during clinical sessions with incel clients. Using simulation-based research methods to observe women-identifying social workers ( n = 20) engage an incel client played by a trained actor, participants reflected on their emotional, cognitive, and somatic responses to working with clients who express misogynistic or ideologically opposi…
Social Work and Countering Violent Extremism
Resonant Research in Uncertain Times
This paper reflects on how one interdisciplinary research team restructured a simulation-based study involving actor-portrayed counselling sessions with social work students and practitioners in response to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the needs of participants and team members to repair fractured connections to themselves and others. We read our experiences alongside Harmut Rosa’s work on Resonance and the concept of Slow Schola…
Preparing for, and organizationally supporting, social work advocacy practice
An essential component of social work practice, advocacy encompasses activities to influence systems and attitudes. Drawing on a larger sequential mixed-methods study of frontline social workers’ experiences, this paper uses descriptive statistics and reflexive thematic analysis of an online survey (n = 43) and in-depth interviews (n = 12) to highlight factors facilitating social workers’ advocacy practices as they support client, family, and com…
The critical difference
This Ideas and Actions paper explores the integration of critical incident pedagogy and simulation-based social work education. Originally proposed by educationist Stephen Brookfield, critical incident technique is an experiential learning method to assist students in turning concrete incidents into new learning. While traditional critical incident pedagogy relies on students’ retrospective reflection on the incident, it can be influenced by memo…
Doing Research Differently
Feminist research methods have been historically collaborative and team-based, using the expertise of multiple researchers to analyze complex social problems. However, while feminist research teams often aim to be non-hierarchal and push against pre-existing power structures, they still exist within the neoliberal university which mediates how this resistance shows up. In this paper, we reflect on how a relational ethics of care can act as a disr…
Feeling professional
Informed by affect theory, this article explores the inherent tensions embedded in the ideals of the “professional” in social work practice through an empirical study of how feelings are negotiated in two simulated social work encounters. Drawing on a simulation-based research project with 34 participants on navigating uncertainty in clinical social work practice and informed by reflexive thematic analysis, findings highlight two central contradi…
Guidelines for Using Simulations in Qualitative Research on Social Work Practice Competencies
The use of simulation (i.e., trained actors) has gained much attention in social work as a method of teaching, learning, and student assessment. Simulation has also been used in medicine as a research method in studying practice competencies. The use of simulation as a part of research design is relatively new in social work. Particularly, little is known about how simulations can be combined with well-established qualitative research methods. We…
Clinician Perceptions of Online Therapy During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Albeit the height of COVID-19 has ended, clinicians have continued to regularly provide online therapy services. In the spring of 2021 during the third wave of COVID-19, we conducted an online survey study to examine psychosocial experiences among mental health clinicians ( N = 196). The survey included two open-ended questions about the use of online therapy as a mode of service delivery. Using a qualitative content analysis of those responses, …
Reflecting on Reflection in Clinical Social Work
This study calls into question some of assumptions within social work education and practice regarding the transformational potential of reflection-on-practice. Participants (n = 34) in this simulation-based study each engaged in two clinically focused simulations, each followed by an interview which included observing segments of their video-recorded simulations. The objectives of this study are to make some sense of the misalignments between pa…
Weaponized Autism
Much attention has been paid to incel communities in recent years. Comprised of involuntary celibate individuals who are dissatisfied with their shared experiences of romantic and sexual rejection, incels blame women and the societal rejection of hegemonic masculinity as the cause of their grievances. Current scholarship has produced conflicting results regarding the prevalence of autism within incel communities when compared to the general popul…
Just Be White (JBW)”
Largely operating online, incels are predominantly male individuals who are frustrated by their involuntary celibacy—their inability to get a romantic or sexual partner. Their worldview is grounded in hostile sexism largely directed at women and shared contempt for mainstream dating standards and feminism. Some incels posit that they can undertake specific racially-defined actions (i.e., skin bleaching, lying about one's ethnicity, cosmetic surge…
Translating Critical Social Work into Clinical Practice
Focused primarily on addressing racial and social injustices through theoretical and critical analysis, critical social work is a well-established paradigm in Canadian social work education. This pilot study explored how clinical social workers might translate critical social work principles into clinical practice. We used simulation-based research methods to observe social workers’ engagement with a Simulated Client (SC; i.e. trained actor). Soc…
It's time to put the copes down and get to work
Incels, the now-widely notorious community of involuntary celibate individuals, represent an emergent online subculture predominantly composed of young men who are dissatisfied with their inability to experience romance or become involved in sexual relationships with women regardless of their desire in doing so. Despite incels being commonly portrayed as upholding a fatalistic and inescapable ideology that promotes networked misogyny and violence…
Just Be White (JBW)”
Largely operating online, incels are predominantly male individuals who are frustrated by their involuntary celibacy—their inability to get a romantic or sexual partner. Their worldview is grounded in hostile sexism largely directed at women and shared contempt for mainstream dating standards and feminism. Some incels posit that they can undertake specific racially-defined actions (i.e., skin bleaching, lying about one's ethnicity, cosmetic surge…
It's time to put the copes down and get to work
Incels, the now-widely notorious community of involuntary celibate individuals, represent an emergent online subculture predominantly composed of young men who are dissatisfied with their inability to experience romance or become involved in sexual relationships with women regardless of their desire in doing so. Despite incels being commonly portrayed as upholding a fatalistic and inescapable ideology that promotes networked misogyny and violence…
Reflecting on Reflection in Clinical Social Work
This study calls into question some of assumptions within social work education and practice regarding the transformational potential of reflection-on-practice. Participants (n = 34) in this simulation-based study each engaged in two clinically focused simulations, each followed by an interview which included observing segments of their video-recorded simulations. The objectives of this study are to make some sense of the misalignments between pa…
Weaponized Autism
Much attention has been paid to incel communities in recent years. Comprised of involuntary celibate individuals who are dissatisfied with their shared experiences of romantic and sexual rejection, incels blame women and the societal rejection of hegemonic masculinity as the cause of their grievances. Current scholarship has produced conflicting results regarding the prevalence of autism within incel communities when compared to the general popul…
Feeling professional
Informed by affect theory, this article explores the inherent tensions embedded in the ideals of the “professional” in social work practice through an empirical study of how feelings are negotiated in two simulated social work encounters. Drawing on a simulation-based research project with 34 participants on navigating uncertainty in clinical social work practice and informed by reflexive thematic analysis, findings highlight two central contradi…
Translating Critical Social Work into Clinical Practice
Focused primarily on addressing racial and social injustices through theoretical and critical analysis, critical social work is a well-established paradigm in Canadian social work education. This pilot study explored how clinical social workers might translate critical social work principles into clinical practice. We used simulation-based research methods to observe social workers’ engagement with a Simulated Client (SC; i.e. trained actor). Soc…
Just Be White (JBW)”
Largely operating online, incels are predominantly male individuals who are frustrated by their involuntary celibacy—their inability to get a romantic or sexual partner. Their worldview is grounded in hostile sexism largely directed at women and shared contempt for mainstream dating standards and feminism. Some incels posit that they can undertake specific racially-defined actions (i.e., skin bleaching, lying about one's ethnicity, cosmetic surge…
Translating Critical Social Work into Clinical Practice
Focused primarily on addressing racial and social injustices through theoretical and critical analysis, critical social work is a well-established paradigm in Canadian social work education. This pilot study explored how clinical social workers might translate critical social work principles into clinical practice. We used simulation-based research methods to observe social workers’ engagement with a Simulated Client (SC; i.e. trained actor). Soc…
It's time to put the copes down and get to work
Incels, the now-widely notorious community of involuntary celibate individuals, represent an emergent online subculture predominantly composed of young men who are dissatisfied with their inability to experience romance or become involved in sexual relationships with women regardless of their desire in doing so. Despite incels being commonly portrayed as upholding a fatalistic and inescapable ideology that promotes networked misogyny and violence…
Guidelines for Using Simulations in Qualitative Research on Social Work Practice Competencies
The use of simulation (i.e., trained actors) has gained much attention in social work as a method of teaching, learning, and student assessment. Simulation has also been used in medicine as a research method in studying practice competencies. The use of simulation as a part of research design is relatively new in social work. Particularly, little is known about how simulations can be combined with well-established qualitative research methods. We…
Clinician Perceptions of Online Therapy During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Albeit the height of COVID-19 has ended, clinicians have continued to regularly provide online therapy services. In the spring of 2021 during the third wave of COVID-19, we conducted an online survey study to examine psychosocial experiences among mental health clinicians ( N = 196). The survey included two open-ended questions about the use of online therapy as a mode of service delivery. Using a qualitative content analysis of those responses, …
Reflecting on Reflection in Clinical Social Work
This study calls into question some of assumptions within social work education and practice regarding the transformational potential of reflection-on-practice. Participants (n = 34) in this simulation-based study each engaged in two clinically focused simulations, each followed by an interview which included observing segments of their video-recorded simulations. The objectives of this study are to make some sense of the misalignments between pa…
Weaponized Autism
Much attention has been paid to incel communities in recent years. Comprised of involuntary celibate individuals who are dissatisfied with their shared experiences of romantic and sexual rejection, incels blame women and the societal rejection of hegemonic masculinity as the cause of their grievances. Current scholarship has produced conflicting results regarding the prevalence of autism within incel communities when compared to the general popul…
The critical difference
This Ideas and Actions paper explores the integration of critical incident pedagogy and simulation-based social work education. Originally proposed by educationist Stephen Brookfield, critical incident technique is an experiential learning method to assist students in turning concrete incidents into new learning. While traditional critical incident pedagogy relies on students’ retrospective reflection on the incident, it can be influenced by memo…
Doing Research Differently
Feminist research methods have been historically collaborative and team-based, using the expertise of multiple researchers to analyze complex social problems. However, while feminist research teams often aim to be non-hierarchal and push against pre-existing power structures, they still exist within the neoliberal university which mediates how this resistance shows up. In this paper, we reflect on how a relational ethics of care can act as a disr…
Feeling professional
Informed by affect theory, this article explores the inherent tensions embedded in the ideals of the “professional” in social work practice through an empirical study of how feelings are negotiated in two simulated social work encounters. Drawing on a simulation-based research project with 34 participants on navigating uncertainty in clinical social work practice and informed by reflexive thematic analysis, findings highlight two central contradi…
“Too Close to Home”
This article explores how women social workers understand and experience gender-based countertransference (GBCT) during clinical sessions with incel clients. Using simulation-based research methods to observe women-identifying social workers ( n = 20) engage an incel client played by a trained actor, participants reflected on their emotional, cognitive, and somatic responses to working with clients who express misogynistic or ideologically opposi…
Social Work and Countering Violent Extremism
Resonant Research in Uncertain Times
This paper reflects on how one interdisciplinary research team restructured a simulation-based study involving actor-portrayed counselling sessions with social work students and practitioners in response to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the needs of participants and team members to repair fractured connections to themselves and others. We read our experiences alongside Harmut Rosa’s work on Resonance and the concept of Slow Schola…
Preparing for, and organizationally supporting, social work advocacy practice
An essential component of social work practice, advocacy encompasses activities to influence systems and attitudes. Drawing on a larger sequential mixed-methods study of frontline social workers’ experiences, this paper uses descriptive statistics and reflexive thematic analysis of an online survey (n = 43) and in-depth interviews (n = 12) to highlight factors facilitating social workers’ advocacy practices as they support client, family, and com…
Social Work Education and Practice (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Social Work (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Qualitative research (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics (3 works)