Shawna J. Lee

Shawna J. Lee, PhD '05, is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, where she is director of the Parenting in Context Research Lab and Director of the Program Evaluation Group (PEG). She is also a faculty affiliate at the Center for Human Growth and Development (CHGD) and at the Institute for Social Research, Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD).

Dr. Lee has published extensively on child maltreatment and child welfare, fathers' parenting behaviors and father-child relations, and the effects of parental corporal punishment on child well-being. Community-based practice and service to the social work profession are central to Lee's work. She currently leads the design, implementation, and evaluation of an intervention for low-income fathers, in collaboration with Healthy Start home visitation programs in Michigan. Lee's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, and the Fatherhood Research Practice Network. You can learn more about her projects and the Parenting in Context Research Lab at parentingincontext.org.

Lee completed the Joint PhD Program in Social Work and Psychology at the University of Michigan in 2005, where she was a National Institutes of Health pre-doctoral trainee in prevention research. She was a post-doctoral research scholar at the Columbia University School of Social Work. She teaches courses in research methods, program evaluation, social policy, and on specialized topics such as intervention to reduce use of corporal punishment.