Daniel Wulff

Degrees: PhD in Human Development and Family Studies (Iowa State University), MSW (University of Iowa), BSc in Sociology (Iowa State University)

Interests: Community practice, family therapy, qualitative inquiries, participatory practice/research.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in Sociology and a master’s degree in social work in the mid-1970s, Dr. Dan Wulff practiced social work for 15 years in a home-based community agency. His in-home work cultivated an interest in family therapy that led to his return to school in the early 1990s. There, he obtained a doctorate in Human Development and Family Studies with a specialization in marital and family therapy.

Wulff began his full-time academic career at the University of Oklahoma, later moving to the University of Louisville for 12 years. There Wulff co-directed the family therapy program within the Kent School of Social Work, the only accredited program in the United States to integrate social work and family therapy.

Wulff moved to Calgary in summer 2007 to continue his academic and practice careers with the Faculty of Social Work and the Calgary Family Therapy Centre. Wulff plans to continue his work in integrating the education of “helping professionals” at U of C, looking to connect the unique benefits afforded to clients from the fields of social work, family therapy, applied psychology, public health, nursing, psychiatry, and others. The practice community looks to the academy for information and support in doing the work they do; the academy depends upon the practice community to keep academic and research initiatives grounded in the realities of front-line community practice.

Wulff is on the boards of the Taos Institute and the Global Partnership for Transformative Social Work (organizations dedicated to using postmodern ideas to enhance practice with clients, organizations, education, and the world-at-large) and serves as a co-editor of The Qualitative Report, an online open access journal dedicated to enhancing qualitative inquiry.