Erika Clairgue Caizero receives Carolyn Thomas Doctoral Fellowship
Erika Clairgue Caizero is this year's recipient of BCSSW's Carolyn Thomas Doctoral Fellowship. This prestigious award recognizes the accomplishments and anticipated contributions a social work doctoral student has made or will make to scholarship related to the well-being of families and children.
Patrick Mulkern successfully defends his area statement
Patrick Mulkern successfully defended his area statement on May 15. The title of his area statement is "Anti-Transgender and Gender-Affirming Policies."
Megan Taylor successfully defends her area statement
Megan Taylor successfully defended her area statement on April 28. The title of her area statement is "The Relationship Between Decision-Making Agency and Mental Health for Refugees Resettled in Canada and the United States."
Sophia Eisenberg successfully defends her area statement
Sophia Eisenberg successfully defended her area statement on April 28. The title of her area statement is "The Dynamic Relationship between Community Violence and Youth (aged 0-22) with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and Disabilities in the United States."
Charles Currie successfully defends his dissertation proposal
Charles Currie successfully defended his dissertation proposal on April 30. The title of his proposal is "Leaving Residential Care in a Resource-Constrained, Post-Conflict Setting: A Qualitative Exploratory Study of Residential Care Leavers’ Transition to Adulthood in Sierra Leone."
Sam McKetchnie successfully defends her dissertation
Sam McKetchnie successfully defended her dissertation on June 24. The title of her dissertation is "Experiences of women of reproductive age living with chronic pain: An examination of the effects of chronic pain on health, wellbeing, and care engagement."
Barbara Mendez Campos Love successfully defends her dissertation
Barbara Mendez Campos Love successfully defended her dissertation on May 2. The title of her dissertation is "Discrimination, Family Leave Policy, and Dementia Care: Addressing Structural Barriers to Caregiver Well-Being."
Mendez Campos Love has also secured a full-time position at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville as an assistant professor on the tenure-track, effective August, 2025.
Natalie Grafft receives 2024-25 Dorothy Book Paper Award
Natalie Grafft is the 2024-25 recipient of the Dorothy Book Paper Award, which is given for the best paper produced by an SSW doctoral student in the previous calendar year.
Barbara Mendez Campos receives 2024-25 Doctoral Teaching Award
Barbara Mendez Campos is the 2024-25 recipient of the inaugural Doctoral Teaching Award, which celebrates the teaching abilities of our doctoral students as evidenced by student evaluations and their Teaching Philosophy Statements.
Christopher Baidoo receives 2024-25 Emerging Scholar Award
Christopher Baidoo is the 2024-25 recipient of the Emerging Scholar Award, given to an SSW PhD student who shows promise of being an excellent scholar as evidenced by research skills, collaboration, and/or conference presentations.
María Alejandra Gutiérrez Torres named Clough Center Fellow
Incoming doctoral student María Alejandra Gutiérrez Torres has been accepted as a Boston College Clough Center Fellow for the 2025-26 academic year.
The Clough Center funds Boston College students and faculty to facilitate their research and participation. Clough Doctoral Fellows attend a weekly seminar and contribute to the annual journal and spring symposium.
Erika Clairgue Caizero has paper accepted for publication in the Journal Especialidades
Erika Clairgue Caizero has had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal Especialidades.
Her paper, titled “Xenophobia and intersections in digital users’ discourses towards the Central American migrant caravan in Tijuana," will be printed in a special issue on International Migrations.
Oladoyin Okunoren successfully defends her dissertation
Oladoyin Okunoren successfully defended her dissertation on April 17.
The title of her dissertation is "Securitization as a Public Health Response: Consequences and Lessons Learned from the West Africa Ebola Outbreak of 2013-16."
Estefania Palacios has article accepted in Social Work
Estefania Palacios has had an article accepted in Social Work.
The title of the article is "Justice, Care, and Collaboration: An Innovative Framework for Social Work Supervision in Interdisciplinary Legal Practice."
Gabi Ortiz receives two national awards from NASPA
Gabi Ortiz has received two national awards from NASPA, the 2025 Mena Valdez Latinx Inclusion Award and the Gender and Sexuality Knowledge Community Intersectionality Inclusion Award, to recognize her work with the Queer and Trans Latinx Collective in Higher Education.
Ortiz will also present a poster at the upcoming 34th Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS Research (CAHR) in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The presentation is titled “Anal cytology among trans women: Implications for cancer screening from the Montreal-Toronto Trans Study,” and will be presented with Dr. Ashley Lacombe-Duncan from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor SSW.
Barbara Mendez Campos publishes article in Frontiers in Public Health
Barbara Mendez Campos has co-authored an article that has been accepted by Frontiers in Public Health. The title of the article is "The equitable aging in health conceptual framework: international interventions infusing power and justice to address social isolation and loneliness among older adults."
Mendez Campos led the section on applying their framework to Mexican Indigenous initiatives, where the authors explored community-based and intergenerational approaches to reduce loneliness. The paper also highlights important work in other Indigenous, international, and U.S. communities, including initiatives for LGBTQ+ older adults, emphasizing the need for justice-centered, inclusive solutions that reflect the diverse experiences of these populations.