Join four scholars who frequently contribute to national policy discussions for a roundtable discussion and workshop on advocacy and engagement methods. Dr. Luisa Deprez (University of Southern Maine), Dr. Lisa Dodson (Brandeis University), Dr. Sarah Horton (UC Denver), and Dr. Philip Rocco (Marquette University) will discuss the challenges and opportunities scholars face in lending their expertise to nonprofits and government agencies.
Participants are asked to bring an engagement project (community or policy engagement, at any stage of development) to workshop with the group, following the roundtable discussion. 12 PM - 4 PM, lunch and refreshments provided, RSVP HERE. Participants are welcome to come and go as their schedule allows.
Speaker Biographies:
Dr. Luisa Deprez’s commitment is to social justice, equality and equity. With a focus on social policy, her work unearths the politics of policy-making as well as the impact of ideology and public opinion on policy exposing the resultant social, economic, and personal consequences. Scholarship concentrated on welfare policy focuses on both its restrictive nature and its corresponding impact and effect on recipients, most particularly single-mothers pursuing post-secondary education. The power of higher education in sustaining privilege and its resultant impact on thwarting access to low-income parents emerges in these investigations. After a 40-year career in academia, Dr. Deprez lends her knowledge and expertise to work with non-profit organizations, government agencies, and state legislatures while continuing to be an active contributor to state and national policy discussions and debates that focus on vulnerable populations.
Lisa Dodson PhD, MPH is a retired research professor of sociology (Boston College) and senior scientist at the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy (Brandeis University). Currently she is the co-chair of Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) Oregon and coordinates citizenship classes for immigrant care-workers at Service Employees International Union, Portland OR. Recent academic articles include “Keeping us in our place: Low-income moms barred from college success” (2019, with L. Deprez) in Contexts, and “Social Network Development Among Low-income Mothers” (with A Freemen) in Family Relations. Articles have also appeared in the Huffington Post, The Conversation and The American Prospect. Dodson’s most recent book, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary People Subvert an Unfair Economy (The New Press, 2010) was called a "must-read" by Time Magazine. Most recent policy report (2016), Mothers Know Best: At the intersection of low-wage work, public assistance and child care uncovers the multiple obstacles that low-income mothers face seeking social mobility. A 2012 policy paper (Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations) examined How Youth Are Put At Risk by Parents’ Low-Wage Jobs (2012) examines the interaction of youth development, family stability, and parents’ low-wage jobs. Professor Dodson specializes in face-to-face research methods, partnering with community-based organizations and national networks, ensuring low-income people are central in the development of public policy. Her earlier book Don’t Call Us Out of Name: The Untold Lives of Women and Girls in Poor America integrated years of field-based research to uncover an alternative account of welfare reform, told from the perspective of hundreds of single mothers and their children. Lisa Dodson’s work has been funded by the Ford, Annie E. Casey, Kellogg, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Ed Show, Alternet, and YesMagazine. Dr. Dodson teaches courses on family poverty, policy and field-based research methods. In the past she has presented research findings in numerous US Congressional hearings and to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Dr. Sarah Horton is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver; her research focuses on immigrants’ health care access and labor conditions. She has conducted more than a decade of research on farmworkers’ health and labor conditions in California’s Central Valley, and is author of They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields: Illness, Injury, and “Illegality” among U.S. Farmworkers, published in the University of California Press’ series in Public Anthropology in 2016. Her book was awarded the Robert Textor & Family Prize in Anticipatory Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association and was runner-up for the Society for the Anthropology of North America’s Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharf Memorial Prize for Critical Study of North America. She has worked with immigrant advocacy groups and state labor agencies to address heat illness among farmworkers in California and wage theft among construction workers in Colorado. She considers herself an engaged anad public scholar. Her work has been featured on Colorado Public Radio, Central Valley Public Radio, and in public media such as Quartz, The Huffington Post, The Hill, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Denver Post, The Fresno Bee, the Scholars’ Strategy Network and The Society Pages.
Dr. Philip Rocco is an assistant professor of political science at Marquette University. His research examines the political economy of policy expertise. He teaches courses on American politics, public policy, and the politics of numbers. He is the author of Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act (University Press of Kansas, 2016) and his research has been featured in Political Science Quarterly, Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Policy, Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, among other venues. Since 2017, Prof. Rocco has also coordinated a national group of health-policy scholars in offering expert review and testimony on Medicaid Section 1115 waivers. This work has brought to light how state and federal agencies have misrepresented scientific evidence to justify the approval of work requirements within the Medicaid program. Prof. Rocco was formerly a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Health Policy Institute. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
