Lorry-Ann Austin

Dr. Lorry-Ann Austin is an Associate Professor and Chair of the School of Social Work and Human Service. She is also a registered social worker.

Lorry-Ann’s research is focused on a participatory community-engaged approach to homelessness in the context of compounding public health crises in British Columbia’s interior region. These crises include escalating poverty, toxic drug poisonings, and climate-related events that include wildfires and floods. These events increasingly intersect with housing insecurity, placing people experiencing homelessness at disproportionate risk. 

Lorry-Ann is working closely with Tangie Genshorak, Executive Director of A Way Home Kamloops Society and a host of other local agencies to raise awareness and surface lived experiences, resilience strategies, and community responses to generate equitable, person-centred, public health responses to homelessness in a changing climate.