Joint PhD Program News

PhD Student Irene Routté has recently received both the Lester P. Monts Award for Outstanding Graduate Research from U-M’s African Studies Center, as well as an honorable mention from the 2022 Bennetta Jules-Rosette Graduate Essay Award contest from The Association for Africanist Anthropology. Routté’s essay, “Will You Take Care? Bio-Space, Racial Assemblages and the U.S. Youth Refugee Resettlement Welfare System,” is an ethnographic case study of an unaccompanied refugee minor from Nigeria during his first year in care under the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement. This essay was also awarded the School’s Henry Meyer award.

Andrea Mora, PhD student Social Work and Developmental Psychology, is one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work's inaugural cohort of fellowship awardees. In addition to supporting policy and practice proposals, the fellowships also broaden the pipeline of social workers equipped for and committed to tackling and surmounting the Grand Challenges. Mora’s research proposal is entitled: “Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence: Protective factors for exposure to community violence and neighborhood-based sexual harassment among Latino/a adolescents in the U.S. and Mexico."

PhD student Joonyoung Cho and Assistant Professor Xiaoling Xiang’s research — on how volunteering can help lessen feelings of isolation — was cited in a New York Times article on managing holiday loneliness.

Nick Espitia, Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Sociology, has successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Our Existence is a Political Issue: Examining the Political Participation of Undocumented Latinx Immigrants in the Midwest.” Katie Richards-Schuster served on his committee.

Espitia has accepted a tenure-track faculty position in the department of social work at Oakland University.

Associate Professor Terri Friedline received the 2022 Doctoral Student Organization Faculty Award. “I'm humbled to receive this award from doctoral students —an acknowledgement of my contributions,” said Friedline. “It is a tremendous honor to play a small role in supporting the next generations of social work and social sciences scholars.”

Lolita Moss, Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Psychology, has successfully defended her dissertation entitled “The Medium and the Message: An Investigation of Mainstream Media Use, Relationship Scripts, and Intimate Partner Violence among Black Adolescents.” Her committee consisted of Lorraine Gutiérrez and Richard Tolman.

Moss has accepted a position as a research faculty professor at Tulane University's Violence Prevention Institute in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

Analidis Ochoa, Luke Shaefer and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor’s 2021 study on blood plasma donations and poverty was cited in the recent Washington Post article "Surviving Inflation One Plasma Donation at a Time."

Kaitlin Ward, Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Psychology, has successfully defended her dissertation entitled “Ecological Influences of Parental Discipline Behaviors and Child Outcomes among Families in Low-and Middle-Income Countries.” Her committee consisted of Shawna Lee and Andy Grogan-Kaylor.

Ward has accepted a position at Google.