Affiliated Graduate Program Faculty Member

Emily Bosk is an Assistant Professor of Social Work. Trained as both a sociologist and a clinical social worker, her research is at the intersection of social theory and applied practice. Broadly, her work uses rigorous social science methods to theorize how organizations and individuals understand and intervene with vulnerable children and families and to trace out the policy and practice implications of these approaches. One line of  work examines the development and implementation of new forms of standardized decision-making in child welfare and the consequences of these tools at the individual, organizational, and policy level.  Other areas of research include: issues related to the lack of integration of social service systems for families, understandings of ‘badness’ in young children and adolescents, the treatment of race in standardized decision-making tools, programs to support parent-child relationships and the development of interventions to support the reunification process in child welfare.  As a sociologist, her subfields include medical sociology and the sociology of childhood.