Gina E. Miranda Samuels named faculty director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture

Gina E. Miranda Samuels has been appointed faculty director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, Provost Ka Yee C. Lee introduced.

Miranda Samuels, affiliate professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, will assume the function on Sept. 1. She will succeed C. Riley Snorton, professor of English Language and Literature, who has served as the middle’s interim faculty director since September 2020.

“Gina is the ideal scholar to lead the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture into its next chapter,” Lee mentioned. “She is deeply committed to the center and its innovative scholarship on race and ethnicity and will collaborate closely with campus and community partners to advance the center’s important mission.”

In her analysis, Miranda Samuels makes use of crucial standpoint epistemologies and interpretive strategies to discover processes of displacement, belonging and therapeutic amongst individuals whose early childhoods embody transracial adoption, foster care or homelessness. Her work identifies dimensions of social coverage and observe which might be typically rooted in biocentric and monocentric notions of race, household and dwelling, rendering them ill-fitting and typically dangerous to the well-being and wholesome growth of many younger folks and households.

During her 20 years at the University, Miranda Samuels has been a CSRPC faculty affiliate and has held management roles on quite a few committees, job forces, and initiatives. She has additionally obtained a number of awards for her analysis, mentorship, and instructing. Miranda Samuels at the moment serves on the Council of the University Senate, the Committee of the Council, and is a member of quite a few editorial boards and nationwide boards of administrators, together with the Society for Social Work Research.

She obtained her PhD and MSSW in social work and social welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her BA in social work at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Since its founding in 1996, CSRPC has fulfilled very important features on campus as an institute dedicated to the examine of race. It helps students and artists throughout the University and metropolis, engages with communities on the South Side, hosts conferences and workshops, and helps a variety of tasks amongst faculty and college students.

In her function, Miranda Samuels additionally will accomplice with the University’s new Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity to develop modern programing, outreach and different assets to additional the examine of race.

“It is from a place of great passion for CSRPC’s mission, and deepest respect for the center’s staff, students, faculty affiliates, and current faculty director Riley Snorton, that I am both honored and excited to take on this new role,” Miranda Samuels mentioned. “It is my genuine commitment to continue the strategic planning work that is well underway, to create new partnerships and deepen existing ones, and to collectively reimagine a center that profoundly realizes its goals of a transformative praxis of scholarship that, in partnership with people and communities, can be used to advance their thriving and flourishing in today’s world and beyond.”