Social Welfare Analysis Colloquium
Speaker Bios- Spring 2007
Cesar G. Abarca
Doctoral student, Sociology and Social Work, Boston University
Candidate Abarca is a doctoral student in the Boston University joint program on Sociology and Social Work. He is a research assistant at the Center for Addictions Research and Services. Prior to graduate school he focused on community-based participatory research, community organizing, program evaluations research, immigration and immigrants rights. His current research interests include gender issues, ethnic relations, ethnography, masculinity construction, and male violence.
Pascale Joassart
Assistant Professor, UMASS Boston Department of Economics
Pascale Joassart received a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of Southern California. She is Assistant Professor of Geography at SDSU since 2007. Before then, she was Assistant Professor of Economics at UMASS Boston. Her publications include: Closing the Gap between Places of Work and Residence: The Role of Rental Housing Assistance in Southern California, Does Local Access to Employment Services Reduce Unemployment? A GIS Analysis of One-Stop Career Centers, The Fiscal Consequences of Concentrated Poverty in a Metropolitan Region, Municipal Service Provision Choices within a Metropolitan Area, Working Poverty in Southern California: Towards an Operational Measure, The Intrametropolitan Geography of Poverty and the Nonprofit Sector in Southern California, and The Distributive Impact of Federal Fiscal Policy: Federal Spending and Southern California Cities.
Ce Shen
Assistant Professor, Boston College School of Social Work
Dr. Shen is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from Boston College and B.A. in theology from the Nanjing Theological Seminary, P.R. China. Dr. Shen’s research focuses on cross-national research on social development, women’s status , maternal/child mortality, quality of governance and social welfare and aging policy in international and cross-cultural context.
Ann Withorn
Professor, UMASS Boston Department of Social Policy and Welfare Rights
Dr. Withorn is a Professor of Social Policy and Welfare Rights at the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her writing and advocacy focuses on poverty and social policy issues. Professor Withorn’s research interests include: ideology and the welfare state, privatization, and social movements. Professor Withorn is also a long-time steering committee member of the Social Welfare Action Alliance, an international organization of social welfare activists. Recent publications include: Still Working for Justice? Community Based Organizations in the Regressive Era, Changing Communities, Changing Lives: Oral Histories from Action for Boston Community Development, edited, with Robert C. Hayden. March, 2002, published by ABCD, and Lost Ground: Reforming Welfare, Redefining Poverty. co-edited with Randy Albelda, South End Press, 2002.
Randy Albelda
Professor, UMASS Department of Economics
Dr. Albelda is a Professor of Economics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Social Policy at University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has served as research director of the Massachusetts State Senate's Taxation Committee and on the legislature's Special Commission on Tax Reform. Her research covers a broad range of economic policies affecting low-income families including: poverty, paid family leave policies, racial and gender divisions in occupations, and the distribution of family income and earnings. Her recent work includes, “Bridging the Gaps Between Earnings and Basic Needs in Massachusetts”, the edited volumes The Dilemmas of Lone Motherhood and/Lost Ground: Poverty, Welfare Reform, and Beyond and the coauthored reports, “Sharing the Costs, Reaping the Benefits: Paid Family and Medical Leave in Massachusetts”, “A Tale of Two Decades: Changes in Work and Family in Massachusetts 1979-1999” and “Beyond Welfare: Emergency Services in Massachusetts.” She is the co-author of the books Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual, and Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination.
Della M. Hughes
Sr. Research Associate, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
Della Hughes is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Youth and Communities at Brandeis University. She is a noted community researcher, public speaker and writer and is the co-founder and publisher (with Susan P. Curnan) of Community Youth Development Journal (CYD) and CYD Anthology 2002. She has served on numerous national and local boards and advisory committees, and played a central role in three global youth forums. She is also a management consultant with foundations and local and national nonprofit and government organizations in the many aspects of community youth development, leadership development, systems and organizational change, strategic planning, community mobilization, learning organizations, evaluation, and board development. Using highly participatory methods, her goal is to provide practical, useful tools and information to assist clients to develop sound, sustainable initiatives, understand how and why they work, and improve them.
Catherine Reissman
Professor Emerita Boston University School of Social Work, Research Professor Boston College School of Social Work
Catherine Kohler Riessman, a social worker and sociologist, is Emerita Professor at Boston University where she taught from 1990-2000. An international expert on narrative research, she is currently a Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Her most recent book, Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences, was published by Sage Publications in 2007. Throughout a long career, she has studied stories of biographical disruption that develop in interview conversations, notably accounts of lives interrupted by chronic illness, infertility, and divorce. She lectures frequently in Europe and the Asia Pacific.
Marah Curtis
Assistant Professor at Boston University
Dr. Curtis is an Assistant Professor at Boston University. Professor Curtis received her Ph.D. in Social Policy, Planning and Policy Analysis at Columbia University School of Social Work in 2005 and was both a Council on Social Work Education and Columbia University Public Policy Consortium Fellow. Dr. Curtis’ research focuses on the effects of public policy on the well being of children and families with particular emphasis on housing policy, incarceration and poverty. Dr. Curtis received a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship from Boston University effective 2006 through 2009 awarded to support the research of outstanding junior faculty.
