SP2 researchers receive awards and recognition at SSWR 2025 Annual Conference

Following the 2025 Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) is celebrating recipients of the Social Policy Researcher Awards: Emerging Scholar, the Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award, and the Excellence in Research Award for Best Scholarly Contribution Published: Honorable Mention, who were recognized at SSWR’s annual awards presentation on January 18. In addition, the School is recognizing a faculty member who has reached a significant milestone with SSWR.

Amy Castro, Associate Professor

Social Policy Researcher Awards: Emerging Scholar

The SSWR Social Policy Researcher Awards honor social work researchers who have made outstanding contributions to social policy at the local, national, or international levels. The Emerging Scholar award is given to an emerging scholar who has made notable contributions to research that has influenced the direction, design, and/or implementation of social policy and its effects on marginalized and oppressed populations.

Dr. Amy Castro is the co-founder and faculty director of SP2’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research. Her work explores economic mobility, guaranteed income, innovation, and disparities in housing and lending. She served as the co-principal investigator of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration under former Mayor Michael Tubbs, which led to a proliferation of experimentation with unconditional cash across the United States. Dr. Castro is the co- principal investigator of 30 applied cash-transfer studies housed at CGIR where she currently advises more than 20 mayoral teams, state, and county legislators on unconditional cash research. Her work on guaranteed income has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, the Monarch Foundation, the City of Los Angeles, LA County, the City of Newark, the Yellow Chair Foundation, the City of Oakland, the Social Impact Fund, and the Economic Security Project. Dr. Castro’s research is featured often in the press, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Nation, the Economist, the LA Times, CNN, NBC, PBS, and National Public Radio.

Jia Xue, Graduate, PhD in Social Welfare

University of Toronto, SP2 PhD alum

Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award

The Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award recognizes individuals who, in their early careers, have done innovative work and are making a notable influence in their field and the profession of social work. Their accomplishments should reflect innovative scholarship, a rigorous approach to social work research, scholarship which is attracting the interest of other scholars and work that exhibits an emerging influence in the field and their contribution to advancing the profession that is noteworthy.

Dr. Jia Xue joined the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, co-appointed with the Faculty of Information as an Assistant Professor, in 2018 after completing her research fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Social Policy & Practice and a M.A. in Statistics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania after she completed her law degree from Tsinghua University Law School in China in 2011. Dr. Xue is the founding director of the Artificial Intelligence for Justice lab. She is also affiliated with Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Her research focuses on applying computational and AI approaches to examine various facets of intimate partner violence and sexual assault, addressing biases in AI, and studying rape myth culture and school bullying in Chinese societies.

Phyllis Solomon, Professor, Associate Dean for Research

10 years on the board of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research (JSSWR)

Dr. Phyllis Solomon has been recognized by Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research (JSSWR) for outstanding service as an associate editor and member of the editorial board for over ten years. A peer-reviewed journal, JSSWR is the flagship publication of SSWR. Dr. Solomon is professor and associate dean for research at SP2. She is internationally known for her research on clinical services and service system issues related to adults with severe mental illness and their families, including research on psychiatric rehabilitation programs and intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system. Dr. Solomon has extensively lectured and consulted in China, Japan, and Korea. In 2015, she delivered the Annual Sidney Ball Lecture at Oxford University. She has edited and co-authored six books, including two on psychiatric rehabilitation, and has over 200 peer-reviewed publications as well as more than 36 book chapters.

At the SSWR Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington, from January 16 through January 19, nearly forty SP2 faculty, students, researchers, and staff contributed to more than forty sessions.

Dedicated to the advancement of social work research, SSWR is made up of more than 1,900 members representing 45 states, 15 countries, and more than 200 universities and institutions.