Rory O'Brien

Rory P. O’Brien (they/them) is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Social Work.

O’Brien came to social work research from a career in advocacy for LGBTQA+ mental health, violence prevention, and sexual and reproductive justice. O’Brien’s research is motivated and inspired by their life and experience as a nonbinary queer with a long history of engagement in feminist, anti-racist, and social justice movements. Their primary interest as a researcher is to produce evidence useful to the protection of human rights through strong and effective policymaking, promotion of youth civic development and action, and engagement of communities in knowledge-production and social change.

O’Brien’s most recent work, in their dissertation, investigated the local implementation of California state policies to protect LGBTQA+ youth in high school, such as California laws that affirm student rights to identity, privacy and sanitation. This work highlighted intervenable issues in the implementation of these human rights policies as well as opportunities for students, school staff and districts to collaborate to effect local change to better protect LGBTQA+ youth. At U-M, O’Brien will be pursuing this effort further by examining southeastern Michigan school policies and practices with transgender and nonbinary student name change requests. The goal of this research is to inform potential future local and state policies to protect transgender and nonbinary student rights to privacy and education in Michigan.

O’Brien uses both qualitative and quantitative methods and is excited to continue expanding their experience with community-based participatory methods through the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.

O’Brien holds a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies from Willamette University, a Master of Social Work and a Master of Public Health from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD in social work from the University of Southern California.