Faculty

Dr. Lindsay Bornheimer's research program focuses on understanding and preventing suicide death among adults experiencing serious mental illness, with a specific focus on psychosis and schizophrenia. Her work aims to examine suicide risk and protective factors, advance theories of suicide, ...

Professor Carter studies associations between pubertal development and patterns of adjustment (psychological, behavioral, and health), with particular attention to how pubertal processes, social-cultural contextual factors (family, peers, teachers, romantic partners), and wider social systems ...

Linda M. Chatters is a professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health and professor in the School of Social Work. She is a faculty associate with the Program for Research on Black Americans at the Institute for Social Research and the Center for ...

Dr. M. Candace Christensen (they/them) is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Christensen’s research consists of a critical feminist approach to community engaged, qualitative and arts-based research methodologies that prevent and respond to gendered, ...

Professor Córdova received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University and graduated a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Minority Fellow. After completing his National Institutes of Health-funded postdoctoral training at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, ...

Cross received her MSW from the School of Social Work and a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. Her research program utilizes a strength-based approach to examining family and cultural factors that promote healthy development and mitigate the risk of poor ...

Dr. Ashley E. Cureton is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and School of Education at the University of Michigan. She also serves as a faculty affiliate in the Center for Equitable Family & Community Well-Being. Prior to her current role, Cureton was a Provost’s Postdoctoral ...

Professor William Elliott is a leading researcher in the fields of college savings accounts, college debt, and wealth inequality. Shaped by his personal roots in poverty in a small steel mill city in Pennsylvania, Professor Elliott pursues challenging individual beliefs and cultural values that ...

Dr. James M. Ellis’s research investigates relationships between education pipeline experiences and racial-ethnic and low-income student pathways to college enrollment and degree completion. His’ scholarship examines the nexus between college readiness program participation, developmental ...

Katrina R. Ellis is an associate professor at the School of Social Work. Her research interests include family health interventions, cancer survivorship, racial and ethnic disparities in health, and family management of chronic health conditions. An overarching goal of her research is to support ...

Dr. Lisa Fedina (she/her) is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work. Her research investigates the connections between forms of violence across the lifespan (e.g., child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, sexual assault), health and mental health outcomes. Her current studies ...

Dr. Terri Friedline writes, organizes, and teaches about racial capitalism, technology and the financial system. She is a professor of social work at the University of Michigan and is the author of “Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Won’t Save a Broken System” (Oxford University ...

Larry M. Gant’s current work focuses on neighborhood-level change efforts in the Detroit and surrounding metropolitan areas. The co-operative work incorporates strategies and tactics inspired by collaborations with research colleagues sharing historical, social and political lessons learned from ...

Karla Goldman's research focuses on the history of the American Jewish experience with special attention to the history of American Jewish communities and the evolving roles and contributions of American Jewish women. She directs the University of Michigan Jewish Communal Leadership Program, a ...

Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Detroit School of Urban Studies. Her areas of research are refugee resettlement, grassroots organizations, participatory practice, state-civil society relations and critical policy ...

Andrew (Andy) Grogan-Kaylor's research focuses on scientific knowledge development and intervention research on children and families with the aim of reducing violence against children and improving family and child wellbeing. Grogan-Kaylor's current research projects examine parenting behaviors ...

Dr. Jaclynn Hawkins received her BA and MSW from the University of California, Berkeley, and her PhD in Sociology and Social Work from the University of Michigan School of Social Work. She is currently an associate professor in the School of Social Work, director of the Vivian A. and James L. ...

Dr. Herrenkohl’s primary research interests focus on the areas of child and family well-being, child maltreatment and the psychosocial and developmental underpinnings of health-risk behaviors in youth and adults; substance use, mental and physical health outcomes of adversity; and resilience.  ...