PhD Candidate Greer Hamilton Recieves ACOSA Doctoral Student Award
BUSSW PhD Candidate Greer Hamilton has received the Doctoral Student Award for meritorious scholarship in the social work field from the Association for Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA). This award honors PhD students who demonstrate outstanding scholarly potential in community and/or organizational practice through their dissertation, scholarly contributions, and substantial research dissemination.
As a macro social work scholar, Hamilton employs participatory and arts-based methods to advance justice and engage residents into action, and helps diverse senior medical professionals think about the ways in which systems of oppression impact service delivery and the translation of evidence-based practices.
Hamilton’s work broadly focuses on the intersection of racial justice, health equity, the built environment, and community-engaged research. Her efforts have concrete results, including:
- A report for MassDevelopment’s Transformative Development Initiative that examined inclusive leadership frameworks, and other reports to policy makers
- Presentations for conferences at the International Society of Exposure Science, the Society for Social Problems Annual Meeting, and other respected organizations
- Arts-based workshops, such as her puppetry workshop for graduate social work students that examined community wellbeing in the context of gentrification
- Public podcasts including exploring social work integration in library settings
“I am excited about Ms. Hamilton’s promise as a scholar and the potential impact her work will have in advancing equity,” says BUSSW Prof. Linda Sprague Martinez, who nominated Hamilton for the award. “Her scholarship is well aligned with the mission of ACOSA and her scholarly potential is exceptional. I am constantly impressed by Ms. Hamilton as a scholar, practitioner, teacher, and colleague. In my opinion she is in a league of her own, and I am excited about her contributions to the field of macro practice social work, which I am certain will be significant over the years to come.”
Currently, Hamilton is preparing her dissertation proposal, an in-depth study in Buffalo, NY focused on understanding how gentrification affects residents’ sense of belonging, which she is scheduled to defend in January. For this work, Hamilton will employ in-depth qualitative research methods and art-based techniques to engage participants in a multi-sensory exploration of how changes in the built environment and its surrounding social context impact individual and community wellbeing.
Hamilton also recently received a diversity supplement to the HEALing Communities Study (HCS) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. HCS aims to reduce opioid overdose deaths through the Communities That Heal (CTH) intervention, a community-engaged, data-driven planning process that will be implemented in 67 communities across four states. HCS employs a coalition planning process to translate evidence-based practices (EBP). Hamilton will examine coalition action plans in eight Massachusetts municipalities to examine how zoning ordinances and codes that govern the build environment impact EBP implementation.
Beyond her research and public scholarship, Hamilton teaches Communities and Organizations, Health Equity, and Racial Justice courses at BU School of Social Work and serves on the BUSSW Equity and Inclusion Committee. She also co-chairs the national organization Society for Social Problems, Division of Sociology and Social Welfare and is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research Doctoral Student Committee and the Society for Social Work and Research Doctoral Student Committee. She is the co-founder of the Hamilton Wilson Student Assistance Fund at the University at Buffalo, which provides monetary support to incoming Black social work and public health social workers.