Alicia Mendez Joins BUSSW as Research Assistant Professor
Alicia Mendez will join Boston University School of Social Work in July 2023 as a research assistant professor.
Mendez’s research focuses on intergenerational trauma, child sexual abuse, post-traumatic growth, and the child welfare system. Her dissertation, entitled “The Intergenerational Transmission of Intrafamilial Sexual-Abuse Related Trauma: An Exploration of Family Stories Between Mother and Daughter,” qualitatively explores how mothers who experienced child sexual abuse are able to break the cycle with their late-adolescent aged daughters. Using an intersectional framework, she also examines child welfare practices and policy through various state and private partnerships and document analysis. Outside of her research activity she is active in service.
From 2020-2022 she was a student director-at-large and board member and chair of the doctoral student committee for the Society for Social Work Research. Her academic service also includes co-facilitating and co-creating “Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Social Work Doctoral Education,” a series led by and created for doctoral students for The Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work, and contributing to the Council for Social Work Education Task Force to Advance Anti-Racism.
She received the Anti-Racist Leadership and Service Award in 2022 and the 2021 Student Award for Leadership and Service, both from The Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work. In 2021 she received a Dissertation Research Funding Award from the Student and Early Career Council (SECC) at the Society for Research & Child Development.
Mendez has taught classes including Diversity and Oppression, Adolescents Risk and Resilience, and Research Methods. In 2021 she developed a class called Confronting Anti-Black Racism at Rutgers University School of Social Work for undergraduates. The class, which centers Black and African writers, teaches the foundation of social work and advocacy through an anti-racist lens. Now offered at all three Rutgers’ campuses, the long-term goals for this class are to modify the course to also be offered at the master’s level and eventually make it a core requirement for students earning their BSW or MSW at Rutgers University.
Mendez will complete her PhD in social work this summer at Rutgers University’s School of Social Work where she also earned her MSW. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Washington.