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
Goldring Reentry Initiative
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
06/21
DeMarcus Jenkins to explore links between housing policies and school integration and desegregation
SP2 Assistant Professor DeMarcus A. Jenkins will serve as co-principal investigator of a $442,340 grant from the American Institutes for Research Equity Initiative in the Behavioral Sciences for the project “Moving in Motown: Examining Promise of Integrated Neighborhoods and Schools Through Detroit’s Choice Neighborhood Initiative.”
Faculty & Research
02/05
New senior fellow joins Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice
Poised to focus on research related to mental health and homelessness, as well as community engaged learning opportunities for students, Dr. Candice Player has joined SP2 as a senior fellow.
Faculty & Research
09/11
New Yorker highlights SP2’s Dr. Dennis Culhane in homelessness feature
The research of Professor Dennis Culhane, Dana and Andrew Stone Chair in Social Policy at SP2, is featured prominently in a New Yorker feature about modern homelessness written by Pulitzer Prize – winning author Jennifer Egan.