Angela Marie MacDougall (Battered Women’s Support Services) has been selected to receive the 2025 Community Activist Award.
Since the late 1960s, the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) has served as a professional organization for scholars and practitioners seeking to advance social justice and policy equity through timely analyses, and direct support of local residents and advocacy organizations.
In 2023, UAA established a special award to recognize and express gratitude for the work of locally engaged advocates who fight against social, economic and political barriers to both protect urban communities, and open access to opportunities and resources for local residents. Their work reflects the same values held by the Urban Affairs Association. This award recognizes local advocates for their current and/or past efforts in promoting the rights and well-being of urban communities and seeks to give public and national recognition to their many contributions.
AWARD COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT
The Urban Affairs Association Community Activist Award Committee is honored to award Angela Marie MacDougall the Community Activist Award. The committee found her education and training, grassroots and community-based work on gender equity, and support of women who have experienced domestic violence to be of critical importance to Vancouver. Since the 1990s, she has been advocating for racial, gender, and economic justice through the creation of trainings, programs, and resources for other urban community-based organizations. Her work extends far beyond the reach of her own organization and city to address gender-based violence and inequity in cities globally.
Angela Marie MacDougall has dedicated her life to addressing violence and awareness of gender inequality, as well as racial and economic discrimination. In addition to her activism and education, she has built grassroots connections between organizations and stakeholder collaboration to strengthen and support social justice in British Columbia. Given the breadth and depth of her work, and the benefits of it for Vancouver and other cities, the committee is pleased to select Angela Marie MacDougall for this award.
AWARD RECIPIENT BIO
Angela Marie MacDougall is the Executive Director of Battered Women’s Support Services in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Since the nineties, Angela has developed training curricula from an intersectional and anti-oppression framework while her work as a trainer with community-based organizations, systems players, universities and in the larger public sphere has always emphasized the influence of a community-based response toward gender, racial and economic justice.
Angela’s impact includes development of empowerment and advocacy-based program and service delivery models that address gender-based violence and violence against women that are grounded in strong theoretical frameworks that include feminist trauma-informed analysis that integrates the roles of substance use and mental wellness. Angela Marie MacDougall has edited and/or written ten manuals on addressing gender-based violence and violence against women from an intersectional anti-oppression feminist framework and has spoken to hundreds of groups throughout Canada, the United States and China.
Angela Marie MacDougall is a founding member of Feminists Deliver, a provincial organization dedicated to shedding a light on the urgent issues facing marginalized communities in British Columbia and the grassroots struggles leading the way for transformative change while building transnational connections between grassroots intersectional feminist movements; and re-envisioning the global women’s agenda as one that centers a diversity of grassroots intersectional feminist voices.
Grounded solidarity organizing, grassroots activism and frontline service delivery, Angela is committed to taking action on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. She is a long-standing member of Vancouver’s February 14th Women’s Memorial March, the first women’s memorial march held since 1992 in response to the murder of a woman in the Vancouver neighbourhood named the Downtown Eastside.
Angela is a founding member of Intersectional Feminist Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative bringing together researchers, academics, data and policy analysts, students and community organizers to provide critical research, data, policy and strategic support for the ending violence, gender equity and social justice movements.
Ms. MacDougall was named a Remarkable Woman by the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Magazine named her one of Vancouver’s most powerful people.
AWARD PRESENTATION
The formal presentation of this award will be made at the upcoming International Conference on Urban Affairs in Vancouver, BC, Canada, at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre. The theme of this year’s conference is Urban Concentration: Challenges to Equity, Mobility, and Sustainability. The conference will convene over 900 participants from 55+ countries and representing 20+ fields of study. All award recipients will be formally recognized for their achievements during the Awards and Recognition Program on April 16, 2025; 3:00–4:15pm.
AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Megan Hatch, Cleveland State University (Chair); Amy Foerster, Pace University; Loretta Lees, Boston University; Nadia Mian, Rutgers University; Chris Quattro, Appalachian State University
ABOUT THE URBAN AFFAIRS ASSOCIATION
The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) is an international professional organization for 1000+ urban scholars, researchers, policy analysts, & public service providers. UAA is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary spaces for engaging in intellectual and practical discussions about urban life. Through theoretical, empirical, and action-oriented research, UAA fosters diverse activities to understand and shape a more just and equitable urban world.
In addition to hosting an annual conference, UAA sponsors ongoing professional development opportunities; Upsilon Sigma: The Urban Studies Honor Society; and two peer-reviewed journals, the Journal of Urban Affairs and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. You can find UAA on the web, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, and X.
