{"id":65439,"date":"2024-01-17T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T19:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/?p=65439"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T23:43:16","slug":"brink-prof-williams-explores-intersection-racial-environmental-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/brink-prof-williams-explores-intersection-racial-environmental-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brink: Professor Williams Explores Intersection of Racial & Environmental Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darien Alexander Williams, PhD<\/a>, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Social Work, studies the interplay between communities and their environment. In an in-depth profile published in The Brink, Professor Darien Alexander Williams shares how his personal history and his work in urban planning and community organizing led him to macro social work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpt from \u201cWhy Is the US So Unprepared for Natural Disasters?\u201d<\/a> (The Brink) by <\/span>Alene Bouranova<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

When people think of social work, they probably imagine caseworkers helping families secure safe housing and navigate bureaucratic welfare systems, or providing support through some of life\u2019s hardest moments. But arranging cities?<\/span><\/p>\n

To Williams, his arrival in the social work field both is and isn\u2019t surprising. \u201cI\u2019m trained as an urban planner, and there\u2019s some very obvious overlap between the worlds of urban planning and macro social work,\u201d he says. Not everyone has necessarily \u201cgotten\u201d his work before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like some of what I do is kind of hard to place, disciplinarily, even within urban planning,\u201d Williams says, \u201cand I\u2019ve experienced instances of people challenging my work belonging within that field.\u201d When he first discussed his research with social workers, however, \u201cpeople were immediately like, \u2018Yes, [we get it], and this is a form of social work. This is a place for you.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

You can read the full BU Today article here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn More About Professor Williams\u2019 Research<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darien Alexander Williams, PhD, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Social Work, studies the interplay between communities and their environment. In an in-depth profile published in The Brink, Professor Darien Alexander Williams shares how his personal history and his work in urban planning and community organizing led him to macro social work. Excerpt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14869,"featured_media":65502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8304,7427,7440,7451,7520,7426,4057],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65439"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80986,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65439\/revisions\/80986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ssw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}