AREAS OF RESEARCH
Mass Incarceration, Homelessness, Substance Use
SP2 Initiatives and Faculty focus applied research, psychosocial services, and person-centered approach to better understand how to recover and provide service to vulnerable populations.
Featured Centers
Center for Carceral Communities
FEATURED FACULTY
Dennis P. Culhane, PhD
Professor; PhD, Boston College, 1990. Homelessness; housing policy; policy analysis research methods.
FEATURED FACULTY
Malitta Engstrom, PhD, LCSW
Associate Professor; PhD, Columbia University. Substance use and intersections with criminal justice system involvement, victimization, HIV, and mental health, particularly in relation to women across the life course and families; informing, developing, and testing interventions to address co-occurring concerns; enhancing the value of scientific findings for use in practice; multigenerational social work practice with families.
FEATURED FACULTY
DeMarcus A. Jenkins, PhD
Assistant Professor; PhD, University of California, Los Angeles. Education policy, housing policy, criminal/juvenile justice, school safety & discipline, gentrification, anti-Black racism, Critical Race Theory, social movements.
FEATURED FACULTY
Noor Toraif, PhD, MA
Assistant Professor; PhD, Boston University. The intersection of the child welfare and juvenile legal systems, crossover youth, criminal legal system, youth and emerging adult reentry, youth-engaged research.
Related News
Faculty & Research
02/13
Groundbreaking experiments with guaranteed income for formerly incarcerated individuals show promising results
Research from the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) reveals the profound potential of guaranteed income for individuals reentering communities after incarceration.
Faculty & Research
02/07
Improving lives through data: SP2’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy boosts national impact through students and alumni
Like a number of SP2 students and alumni, Sharon Zanti, PhD in Social Welfare ’24, has taken a path that is interwoven with SP2’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP). An initiative co-founded by Professor Dennis Culhane, AISP has paved the way for state and local governments to better support residents by responsibly connecting data.
Faculty & Research
02/03
SP2 faculty among “World’s Top 2% Scientists”
Nine SP2 faculty are listed among the Stanford University-Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientists for the past two years or on the basis of career-long data. The ranking is calculated with data representing academic citations and peer-reviewed journal publications.