Research.

Trauma- Informed Care for diverse professional settings

 

There is now overwhelming evidence—such as the landmark CDC and Kaiser Permanente “ACEs study"—that concludes the majority of people we work with in diverse settings have experienced trauma, and that this trauma impacts individuals’ physical, social, mental, emotional, education, and spiritual well-being. I research how to translate trauma-informed principles to non-clinical settings, including university classrooms, community engagement projects, and other community/business settings.

I also apply these “translated” principles into concrete, context-specific practices, building new handbooks, graphics, tables, and other heuristics to support individuals’ and organizations’ strategic implementation of trauma-informed principles.

For examples of this work, see:

  • Wounds and Writing: Building Trauma-Informed Approaches to Writing Pedagogy (dissertation project, forthcoming in University of Louisville library database and available upon request)

  • “On Trauma and Safety: Toward Trauma-Informed Research Practices” (available in Computers and Composition Digital Press)

Inclusive Writing Pedagogy & Programs

Educators cannot ignore ways that our education system has historically excluded people on the basis of identity, such as race/ethinicity, gender (identity), class, (dis)ability, citizenship and mental health status, and so one. As instructors and administrators, we must reconsider the way accepted, long-standing practices sustain inequities in order to foster educational spaces that respond to the students actually in front of us, which is an increasingly diverse group. Currently, I study these issues through research on how classroom, research, and community engagement practices might more ethically respond to mental health status and race/culture, as separate and intersecting factors.

I’ve explored these threads through:

  • My dissertation study—“Wounds and Writing: Building Trauma-Informed Approaches to Writing Pedagogy” (forthcoming in University of Louisville library database and available upon request)

  • A recent invited workshop at Trinity College (“Trauma-Informed Community Engagement) and conference presentation (“Access and Active Learning in Trauma-Informed Writing Pedagogy)

  • An ongoing collaborative project exploring applications of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) to the work of college writing instructors in classrooms and community engagement project, as well as how CSP and Trauma-Informed Care might inform and strengthen each other (see “Trauma-Informed Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: Working with Rising Sixth Grade Black and Latina Girls and their Communities of Struggle” for 2017 Conference on Community Writing)

  • An essay for Making Future Matters and an invited multi-disciplinary panel for the Cooperative Consortium on Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research on how writing studies and other research can (and should) be trauma-informed

Engaged research that collaborates across disciplines & communities

In the U.S., we currently face complex, systemic social problems that are best addressed through collaborative relationships across disciplines, communities, and individual identities. In my research, I foster such partnerships as both a team member and an administrator who influences institutional support for this work.

The CV page linked above lists all my work with engaged research projects, notably: