Social Welfare History Project Biography

McPherson, Jane, Ph.D., MPH, LCSW

Jane McPherson, Ph.D., MPH, LCSW, is an associate professor at the University of Georgia School of Social Work. In her evolving public-facing research and pedagogical project– Complex Cloth–she explores the entwined histories of the University of Georgia, race, labor, and social work in Athens, Georgia. As part of this larger project, she is currently preparing Judia Jackson Harris’s unpublished…

Milambiling, Joyce Ph.D.

Joyce Milambiling, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Languages and Literatures at the University of Northern Iowa. She earned a doctorate in Linguistics from the City University of New York Graduate Center and worked in higher education for over 30 years educating language teachers. In 2019, Milambiling contributed a chapter, “The Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights,”…

Harty, Justin, Ph.D.

Justin Harty, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s School of Social Work. He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago and holds dual bachelor’s degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago. With a background as a licensed…

Eifert, Madelena

Madelena Eifert holds a Masters in Public Health (M.P.H.) with a focus on epidemiological methods and research.

Bukach, Nadia

Nadia Bukach is a clinical M.S.W. student at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Mellon Foundation Social Welfare History Graduate Fellow at VCU Libraries. She earned her B.A. in Geography from the University of Richmond in 2010, and a certificate in massage therapy in 2012. She served as GIS technician at the University of Richmond’s Geospatial…

Lehman, Angela

Angela Lehman received a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001 and a Master of Arts in history from VCU in 2023. Between 2001 and 2013, she was a freelance journalist, receiving a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to attend the Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and…

Sathish, Shruti

Shruti Sathish graduated from the University of Richmond in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and minors in Health Studies and Mathematics. She is is passionate about the role of storytelling in creating social change, and since 2021 has been working with HIV awareness activist Willnette Cunningham to write Cunningham’s…

Cunningham, Willnette

Willnette Cunningham is a retired postal worker, an AIDS survivor and HIV awareness activist. She has worked for more than 15 years to raise awareness of this infection and disease, to educate on transmission and progression if not taken seriously, and to advocate for prevention of spreading of this disease. Cunningham sums up her work…

Samuel, Jessica S., Ph.D.

Jessica S. Samuel, Ph. D. is an educator, interdisciplinary scholar and decolonial activist whose work focuses on race, education, colonialism and the environment, including where they all might converge, in the United States and Caribbean. Her research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Social Science Research Council, and…