SSWR virtual event: Beyond a Seat at “The Table”: Building a Legacy of Research for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims, with Dr. Tanya Sharpe

The Society for Social Work (SSWR) research is pleased to announce that Dr. Tanya L. Sharpe — the recipient of the Society for Social Work and Research and the Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, 2023 Aaron Rosen Lecture Award — will present her lecture titled: Beyond a Seat at “The Table”: Building a Legacy of Research for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims, virtually, Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm, Eastern.

> Click here to register for this free virtual talk

Dr. Sharpe’s body of scholarly research reflects the tradition of the Aaron Rosen Lecture to promote racial equity and social justice in social work education; safety, identities and wellness of BIPOC women and LGBTQ people; domestic violence in minoritized communities; and the use of critical and feminist theories and methodologies in social work.

Tanya L. Sharpe, MSW, Ph.D. joined the Factor-Inwentash Faculty in July 2018 after serving as an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Social Work for 11 years. She received her Ph.D. in Social Work from Boston College located in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Sharpe is the founder and director of the Centre for Research & Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims (The CRIB), a multidisciplinary initiative designed to advance research, policy and practice for and in collaboration with Black survivors of homicide victims throughout our global community.

Dr. Sharpe is a community-engaged researcher who is passionately committed to the development of culturally responsive approaches and sustainable opportunities allowing Black communities to thrive in the aftermath of experiencing devastating traumatic injury. Her research examines sociocultural factors that influence the coping strategies of Black family members and friends of homicide victims. She has developed culturally appropriate interventions and best practices designed to assist Black survivors of homicide victims in the management of their grief and bereavement. Her comprehensive Model of Coping for African-American Survivors of Homicide Victims (MCAASHV) (Sharpe, 2015) has informed the development of a psychosocial educational intervention (Sharpe et al., 2018), and a tool of measurement, the Inventory of Stress & Coping for African American Survivors of Homicide Victims (ISCASHV) (Sharpe et al., 2022), designed to assess the needs and coping strategies of African American survivors of homicide victims.

Through interdisciplinary collaborations, Dr. Sharpe utilizes her track record of diverse community engagement to expand upon her seminal research findings by advancing our understanding and delivery of services to African, Caribbean and Black survivors of homicide victims throughout our global communities. Dr. Sharpe’s expertise in the post-homicide experiences of Black survivors of homicide victims has been influential to developing post homicide pedagogy within a broader Canadian context for Racialized communities. Specifically, her research has been successful in transforming the way service providers and policy makers are addressing the chronic and catastrophic experiences of homicide for Indigenous, African, Caribbean, Black (ACB), and Racialized communities with federal funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and provincial funding from the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate.

Dr. Sharpe’s innovative ability to mobilize and disseminate knowledge to the public has brought The CRIB and its mission to the forefront of local and global discourse. Dr. Sharpe has emerged as a public intellectual, having made several radio and television appearances on diverse media outlets to comment on notable homicides and their impact (e.g., CBC Metro Morning, CP24, National Public Radio (NPR-USA), CTV News, Global News Canada, and Breakfast Television Canada) to name a few. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, and throughout the period of the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and so many others that don’t appear in the headlines of our newspapers, The CRIB provided intellectual, frank, and impactful sustenance to Black and Brown communities by launching an Instagram Live show entitled 30@8:30. Now in its fourth season, 30@8:30 remains a uniquely original platform where Dr. Sharpe hosts an expert every Wednesday night for 30 minutes to engage the public in candid conversations about the violent structural inequities that impact Black communities, leaving them disproportionately vulnerable to homicide, COVID-19, mass incarceration, police brutality, compromised mental health, and physical well-being.

The Society for Social Work and Research and the Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis established the Aaron Rosen Lecture to honor the lifetime achievement of Dr. Rosen and provide the SSWR membership with an annual scholarly lecture that will move the field forward in terms of the integration of practice and research. Recipients of the Aaron Rosen Lecture are selected based upon an accumulated body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, or effective utilization of research in practice. Preference is given to nominees whose scholarly innovations directly speak to our profession’s value base of social justice and inform practice methods and models that disrupt rather than replicate colonizing cycles and representations of oppression, disenfranchisement, marginalization, and its lived experience.