On April 17, the University of Connecticut (UConn) Office of the Provost announced awards of promotion and/or tenure to faculty, including the School of Social Work’s Kathryn Libal, Ph.D.
Since 2007, Libal has taught at both the School of Social Work (SSW) and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute (HRI), specializing in human rights, refugee resettlement, social welfare and qualitative research methods. She has directed the HRI since 2015, where she has worked to deepen interdisciplinary and cross-professional educational programs, research, and outreach inside and outside the university. She teaches courses on human rights and social work, qualitative research methods, social policy analysis, and approaches to human rights advocacy, some of which also contribute to the university’s Graduate Certificate in Human Rights.
Libal’s scholarship has focused on the Middle East and United States. She has published on women’s and children’s rights movements in Turkey and on the advocacy of international non-governmental organizations on behalf of Iraqi refugees. Currently she is researching the politics and practices of voluntarism and refugee resettlement in the United States in collaboration with SSW faculty S. Megan Berthold, Scott Harding and several doctoral students in social work. The team is examining how voluntarism in an era of xenophobia and backlash creates new forms of civic connection and political participation among volunteers, social service providers, and refugees and asylum seekers.
In addition to publishing several co-edited volumes, a co-authored text, and numerous articles on refugees, migration, and human rights and social work, Libal has helped to shape the field of human rights and social work through serving for many years on the Committee on Human Rights, which was the precursor of the Council on Social Work Education’s Council on Environmental Justice and Human Rights. She is the UConn’s liaison with the Scholars at Risk Program and a founding member of the executive committee of Scholars at Risk USA chapter. Her role as director of the HRI also has afforded her the opportunity to serve on the executive committee of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
