Lana Wells named Max Bell Senior Fellow

For more than 16 years, Lana Wells, MSW, RSW, has been working toward a crucial goal: preventing domestic and gender-based violence before it happens.

Now, a prestigious Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellowship will give the University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work researcher an opportunity to step back, bring together what she has learned, and consider where the violence-prevention field needs to go next.

Wells, an associate professor and the Brenda Strafford Chair in the Prevention of Domestic Violence, leads Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, a research-action hub and knowledge-mobilization initiative focused on preventing gender-based violence and advancing healthier relationships, families, and communities.

Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow Grants provide experienced professionals with an opportunity to devote a substantial portion of their time to research, writing and public education, with the goal of contributing to important public-policy discussions.

Dr. Ellen Perrault, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Social Work, says the fellowship is fitting recognition of Wells’ thought leadership and community-engaged research.

“This is a wonderful recognition of Lana’s leadership and impactful work,” says Perrault. “The Senior Fellowship will provide her with additional capacity to continue advancing important policy and practice change. She is making significant contributions to the field.”

For Wells, the award creates something particularly valuable: time to consolidate nearly two decades of research, collaborative, and policy work. 

“I want this work to help shape what comes next for the prevention field, bringing together the strongest evidence and what we’ve learned from our collaborators and partnerships over the years to help policymakers, donors and gender-based violence practitioners make decisions that can lead to real, lasting change,” says Wells. 

An upstream evolution

The fellowship also represents another step in an evolution that has defined Wells’ career.

Before joining UCalgary, Wells served as president of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, where much of her work focused on supporting shelters and advancing women’s rights. At UCalgary, she says her research increasingly moved “upstream” – toward understanding how violence against women could be prevented in the first place.

That shift led her to examine the social conditions that contribute to violence, the role of men and boys in prevention, and the policies, institutions and community systems that can become levers for change. 

“For decades, the sector has largely focused on responding after violence has occurred, and that work is absolutely essential,” says Wells. “What inspires me is the opportunity to build on that response by strengthening primary prevention. The evidence in this field has grown immensely, and I’m proud that our work has contributed to that progress.”

Building on a policy-advocacy legacy

As the founder and director of Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, Wells works at the helm of Canada's first research hub dedicated exclusively to the primary prevention of gender-based violence.

In 2010, Shift launched with a bold purpose: to prevent violence from happening in the first place. Since then, the research team at Shift has partnered with hundreds of organizations and institutions across Canada to address the root causes of violence and advance more equitable futures, including by working with all levels of government, law enforcement, Indigenous leaders, educators, employers, women's organizations, and grassroots groups.

Increasingly, Wells’ work focuses on translating research into policy and practice more quickly, using better and more localized data to inform prevention efforts, and working directly with the people best positioned to create change in their communities, including local police detachments and women’s shelters in small towns.

Among the 100+ reports, strategies, frameworks, and tools that have shaped violence prevention efforts across Canada, Wells’ research at Shift recently influenced the Government of Alberta’s new 10-Year Strategy to End Gender-Based Violence. Her work on Alberta’s Primary Prevention Playbook is referenced directly in the province’s strategy, representing a major step toward putting Wells’ recommendations into action at scale.

“The Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellowship is an opportunity to build on what we have learned over the past 16 years, and to consider how we can turn that knowledge into lasting policy and practice change,” says Wells.

Fellowship creates space for new thinking

Wells suggests that the fellowship comes at an important moment. Growing concerns about misogyny, violence against women, and the influence of social media and popular culture on young people are creating new challenges for those working to prevent gender-based violence. But Wells also sees reason for hope in the people, organizations, and networks already advancing prevention across Canada.

“I think Canada has an extraordinary infrastructure of people and organizations committed to this work, and I want to tap into that over the next year,” says Wells. “I want to create space for conversations that are solutions-focused. I’m interested in what we can build and reimagine together, rather than focusing only on what needs to be dismantled or critiqued.”

The Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellowship will give Wells dedicated time to pursue that thinking: to write, consult with communities and experts across Canada and Australia, bring together lessons from research and practice, and test emerging ideas with others in the field.

The goal is not to offer a single solution to a complex problem, but to help stimulate a broader conversation about what comes next for primary prevention and how research, policy, philanthropy and practice can work together to accelerate change.

For Wells, that work must remain firmly grounded in communities.

“If we want to create lasting change, it has to happen with real people who have real influence in real communities,” she says.

The fellowship builds on Wells’ longstanding relationship with the Max Bell Foundation, which has supported Shift’s policy and systems-change work over many years.