The School of Social Work's Office of Research & Scholarship (ORS) will host a panel presentation entitled Moving from Manufactured Ambivalence to Building Power: Recommendations for Voter Engagement Interventions Through a Participatory Project with Formerly Incarcerated People, featuring guest speakers, James Jeter, Dr. Sukhmani Singh, and Tanya Rhodes Smith, MSW, on Monday, November 11, 2024, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
James Jeter, Co-founder and Director of Full Citizen’s Coalition, is a local Connecticut leader and voice for justice among formerly incarcerated leaders. Mr. Jeter serves as the current treasurer of the Connecticut Bail Fund, serves on the advisory board of Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education, has been honored with the 100 Men of Color Distinction, led participatory budgeting with Hartford City Council, and has returned to Cheshire Correctional Institution to speak to residents of its TRUE Unit. Mr. Jeter is dedicated to the cause of prison education and has sought opportunities to apply his own experience to benefit those still incarcerated or returning home.
Dr. Sukhmani Singh is an assistant professor at the UCONN School of Social Work and affiliate faculty member of the Center on Community Safety, Policing and Inequality at the School of Law, University of Connecticut. Broadly, Dr. Singh’s research is anchored in intersectional and decolonial frameworks and her scholarship aims to advance systems change, particularly at the nexus of the juvenile legal and education systems. Currently, Dr. Singh is the Principal Investigator of a grant awarded by the Ms. Foundation for Women. Anchored in the “no research about us, without us” mantra, this project seeks to engage young women co-researchers directly impacted by the juvenile legal system to both create and disseminate policy-based recommendations to both juvenile and education systems to effectively serve the educational needs of systems-impacted youth.
Tanya Rhodes Smith, MSW, is an instructor in residence at the School of Social Work. She teaches in the policy practice concentration in the areas of program planning and evaluation, political advocacy and political social work. Ms. Rhodes Smith is the director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work. Her areas of specialization include policy development, nonprofit administration, voter engagement and legislative advocacy.
We encourage you to join us in person for this presentation in HSSW 113. Lunch will be served. For those participating virtually, please join via Webex.
Contact ssw-ors@uconn.edu with questions or to request an invite.
For more information, contact: ORS at ssw-ors@uconn.edu