Join us for this Hot Topic Webinar featuring a powerful conversation with Julia Read, a PhD candidate at the Lyle S. Hallman School of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. Julia’s research and clinical background are reshaping how we think about peer work and whose knowledge counts in substance use and mental health care.
Drawing from her own lived and living experience alongside her professional practice, Julia critically examines the dominance of biomedical frameworks and elevates the deep expertise held by people who have been psychiatrized, diagnosed, or criminalized under labels like “addict.”
In this talk, Julia explores the realities faced by people with lived/living experience working inside substance use health systems — including the ways they encounter exploitation, isolation, and institutional co-optation across both abstinence-focused and harm-reduction spaces. She also offers a vision for what genuinely transformative, justice-driven peer work can look like.
Rooted in relational accountability, reciprocity, and community-based ways of knowing, Julia’s perspective reimagines how knowledge is created and how healing can be supported in substance use and mental health systems.