Dr. Straka describes herself as a creative change agent, a critical thinker and a capacity builder. Professionally and personally committed to a feminist, anti-racist, anti-oppressive mission, she considers her research and teaching to be her forms of social work practice.

Dr. Straka is looking at the role of allies in developing indigenous research methodologies and ethics.

Her research interests include Aboriginal studies and human rights. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Straka left her first career in private-sector management to enter the field of social work. During her education at McGill, Dr. Straka became involved in national health policy research, co-management of an HIV/AIDS medical education project and child welfare projects. However, it was her nine years as a researcher at the CLSC René-Cassin in Montreal that led to her focus on social gerontology. The centre is affiliated with three universities and hosts a provincial research team in critical social gerontology. She completed her PhD on How social workers in community health-care settings understand and respond to concerns of intimate partner abuse in the lives of older women. Her research program aims to develop a feminist anti-oppressive practice approach to social gerontology through participatory action research. Dr. Straka’s initial teaching duties are in the areas of gerontology and mental health.

She was also on the organizing committee for the Strangers in New Homelands conference on the social reconstructing of "home" among immigrants in the diaspora. It was held Nov. 3-4, 2011.

The main theme for the Faculty of Social Work conference, co-sponsored by the Centre for Human Rights Research, was positioning the rights of immigrants and refugees into the human rights agenda around the world. Read the call for papers.