School of Social Work News

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari is the editor of “Exploring Sexuality and Disability: A Guide for Human Service Professionals,” published earlier this month. “It is the first book on sexuality and disability published specifically focused on those serving and supporting the disability community (compared to targeting only academics or only disabled people), and one of 10 books on sexuality and disability that exist in the world,” said Kattari.

Chapter editors include Lecturers Jax Kynn, Erin Martinez and Laura Yakas; PhD students E.B. Gross, Nicolas Juarez and Kari Sherwood; and MSW student syd lio riley.

The Center for Equitable Family & Community Well-Being, led by Professor Trina Shanks, has received a $1 million contract to evaluate American Rescue Plan (ARP) money directed through the Washtenaw County Racial Equity Office.

Passed in March 2021, the ARP was designed to provide relief and support in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan supports community investments in programs and infrastructure to build stronger, more equitable post-pandemic economies.

The center’s team of faculty, staff and students will evaluate county-approved projects, including a financial equity center, expansion of local broadband service, and a community priority fund, which will direct grants to nonprofits expanding capacity while cultivating sustainable funding sources to continue their work. 

“These organizations serve parts of the county that historically have been underinvested in and not received substantial public funding,” Shanks said. Small organizations that stepped up during the pandemic—regarding public safety, homelessness, education and basic needs—can now grow, become secure and have sustainable impact.

“We believe that an intentional focus on those whose work hasn’t been acknowledged with federal funding, especially people of color, will bring greater equity to the system and involve the people closest to the solutions,” she said.

Professor William Elliott III spoke with WalletHub about the ending of the student loan moratorium. “The student debt problem requires that policy both deal with its symptoms and its root cause,” said Elliott. “Paying for college should not be a lifelong sentence.”

Matthew Bakko, Joint PhD in Social Work and Sociology, has successfully defended his dissertation, “Institutional Change in Municipal Public Safety and the Logics of Punishment and Care.” Sunggeun Park served on his committee and Katie Richards-Schuster co-chaired his committee.

Bakko has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University.

Assistant Professor Lisa Fedina, Associate Professor Kristin Seefeldt, and Professor Rich Tolman all have projects selected to participate in U-M’s newly launched Boost program. Part of U-M’s Bold Challenges Initiative, the Boost program supports new and early-stage multidisciplinary teams whose ambitious, transdisciplinary projects have substantial potential for significant large-scale funding.

Fedina and Tolman’s interdisciplinary team’s project explores “Building Trustworthy Environments: Advancing Knowledge about Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Universities, Healthcare, and Communities.” Seefeld is part of the interdisciplinary team studying “Community Tech Workers: Advancing a Sustainable Vision for Small Business Tech Support in Detroit."

Greer Hamilton is a place-based researcher who examines how systems of oppression are embedded into the built environment and how they thus impact individuals’ health, well-being and use of public spaces. As a researcher, she uses community-engaged and arts-based approaches to understand study participants’ experiences with places. Prior to her work as a researcher, she worked in Buffalo, New York for nonprofits focused on health inequities and community capacity building.

Of her decision to come to the University of Michigan School of Social Work, Hamilton said, “It was important to me to be in a school committed to community-engaged and arts-based research and teaching. Commitment to these is evident in the work of the university at large and also in the work of the faculty, staff, and students of the School of Social Work. I am excited to be a part of a community so dedicated to using creative approaches to address social issues.”

Hamilton holds a BA in Health and Human Services and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Buffalo (New York), and a PhD in Social Work from the Boston University School of Social Work.

M. Candace Christensen’s research takes a critical feminist approach to community-engaged, qualitative, arts-based research methodologies that prevent and respond to gendered, racial and anti-LGBTQ+ violence. Their commitment to this approach is grounded in their positionalities as a Femme genderqueer, poly-sexual, artist-activist and survivor of sexual violence. They aim to deconstruct paradigms and practices that perpetuate power-based violence and to build cultures focused on self-determination, a sense of connection and mutual empowerment. They use Theatre of the Oppressed to construct sexual violence prevention interventions, and they have experience with community-based theatre, sexual violence-prevention activism, queer liberation and racial justice, and with helping students implement creative approaches to social work practice. Their recent work focuses on queer and trans youth development. 

“I came to the U-M School of Social Work because the school values arts-based social justice research,” Christensen said. “Using the arts in research, teaching, and practice creates a brave space for folx to take risks that enrich and expand our understanding of social justice topics like interpersonal violence, anti-Black racism, and queer and trans phobias. Bringing an arts-infused lens to these issues shows why these problems exist and what we can do about them.”

Christensen holds a BA in theatre and literature from the University of Texas at Dallas, and an MSW and a PhD in Social Work from the University of Utah.

PhD student So’Phelia Morrow recently published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on the underrecognized dangers of emotional abuse. “I can’t say that I was ever hit, slapped or punched, but I know that a prison of abuse can be built without the abuser ever laying a hand on the victim.” 

Morrow is a Public Voices Fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls. Her fellowship is part of The OpEd Project and Equality Now.