Identity and Well-Being: Issues of Policy & Practice

How do race, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity influence well-being? This conversation centers on how identity-based disparities are embedded in social policy, housing, education, and healthcare systems. Our speakers will explore how intersectional approaches to well-being can illuminate paths toward greater justice and inclusion.

Speakers: DeMarcus Jenkins & Amy Hillier. Moderated by Ayana Colvin.

Speaker Biographies:

Amy Hillier, PhD, MSW, is a social worker and an Associate Professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). Her most recent research focuses on transgender youth and their families. With colleagues, she is working to develop a short screener for parents to complete in health care settings to identify young children who are gender non-conforming, to normalize a wide range of gender expressions and identify families who might need support.

Her other research has focused on historical housing and public health disparities, including mortgage redlining, affordable housing, healthy foods, park use and access, and outdoor advertising. She has taught courses in city planning, urban studies, public health, and social policy on GIS, racism, public health and the built environment, and research methods.

She is the founding director of the cross-school graduate LGBTQ certificate. With Dr. Stephanie Boddie, Dr. Hillier co-directs “The Ward,” a research, teaching, and public history project dedicated to sharing the timeless lessons about racism and the role of research in affecting social change based on W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1899 book, The Philadelphia Negro.

DeMarcus A. Jenkins is an assistant professor in the School of Social Policy and Practice with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Broadly, his program of research centers on important policy- and practice-relevant issues concerning Black and other vulnerable populations in relation to education, housing, and criminal/juvenile justice. Specifically, his work focuses on (1) the interconnectedness of education and criminal justice, including the strategies, technologies, and logics of carceral systems that appear in schools; (2) the relationship between education reform and urban development with a focus on housing policies; and (3) the politics of policy change or how marginalized populations interact with the policy process. He investigates the intersection of race, urban space, and policy and its implications for educational equity and justice. Dr. Jenkins’ interdisciplinary scholarship draws on critical theories of race, critical spatial theory, Black geographies, critical policy studies, and urban sociology. His research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Before joining SP2, Dr. Jenkins held faculty appointments at Penn State University and the University of Arizona, where he was founding faculty in the Education Policy Center. He is currently a faculty affiliate at the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and the inaugural visiting faculty fellow at the Campus Abolition Research Lab (CARL) at the University of Michigan. Previously, he worked as a policy analyst at the state and local levels and as a high school English teacher. Dr. Jenkins earned his PhD in Urban Schooling from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his EdM from Georgia State University and MA from American University. He holds a BA in English and Afro-American and African Studies from the University of Michigan.

Ayana Colvin is a PhD student at the School of Social Policy and Practice. Before joining SP2, she worked as a high school English and a New Language (ENL) and English Language Arts (ELA) teacher in the New York City public schools system for eight years, gaining valuable insights that propelled her toward a career in social work.

She holds a BA in Humanities with minors in French and film studies from Ohio Wesleyan University, a Master’s in TESOL Education from City College of New York, and a Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University.

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