Lisa Werkmeister Rozas
Biographic Data
| ID | 381886 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa Werkmeister Rozas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa Werkmeister |
| FAMILY NAME | Rozas |
| SIGNATURE | ROZAS L W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Connecticut |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7821-3490 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Co-Designing a Socially Engaged Mindfulness Intervention for Social Work Students: A Participatory Research Note
Mindfulness practice has strong potential to enhance social work education: the practices enhance wellbeing and may also support capacity for social action (e.g., advocacy, community organizing). This research note centers our participatory approach—a best practice but underutilized in mindfulness research—in developing a socially engaged mindfulness (SEM) intervention for social workers. We detail our collaborative process with a Social Work Stu…
Towards a socially engaged mindfulness pedagogical approach to anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work education
This paper explores the potential of a socially engaged mindfulness (SEM) pedagogical approach in anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work education. The authors examine mindfulness steeped in a socially engaged and critical consciousness-raising context among social work graduate students in the US enrolled in a course on oppression. Qualitative data was gathered through feedback surveys across three years. Reflexive thematic analysis reveale…
Critical Hope and Resistance through Collective Poetic Inquiry: A Response to Federal Attacks on Queer and Trans Communities by Scholar-Advocates
In early 2025, the US federal government made sweeping and targeted attacks that affect queer, trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive (QT and TGE) communities across the United States with the most harmful attacks directed at TGE youth and adults and those situated at marginalized sociostructural intersections. As scholars in an academic social work program who sit at the intersections of marginalized sociostructural locations, are allies/accompl…
The use of critical theory in social work international study program: Instilling racial and epistemic justice
This paper presents an example of transformative learning afforded to social work students participating in an international study program between United States and Germany focusing on Genocide and the Holocaust. Using epistemic justice as a frame, it foregrounds the experience of a Black female social work student who was the target of microaggressions while abroad and highlights the critical theories, such as critical consciousness, critical re…
Liberating Social Work Education Through Decoloniality
Within Social Work education, there has been a rising call for decoloniality. Among the areas most frequently targeted for transformation are the privileging of Christian Euro-centric sources of knowledge and means of transmission, Christian Euro-centric relational norms and behaviors, Euro-centric standards of excellence and professionalism. The origin of coloniality is steeped in four pillars, White Supremacy, Patriarchy, Capitalism and Christi…
Coloniality of power, critical realism and critical consciousness: The three “C” framework
Typical pedagogical practices center Whiteness, particularly when teaching about racism and racial justice. This article offers a framework that de-centers the White frame using: coloniality of power, critical realism, critical consciousness. The coloniality of power analyzes the order of social relations and embedded hegemonic structures in the US. Critical realism posits a multi-layered construct of reality encompassing subjugated experiences, …
Educating Bilingual Social Workers for the Child Welfare Workforce: A Distributive Justice Approach
Spanish/English bilingual (SEB) speaking social workers are in high demand, particularly in the area of Child Welfare. Most require training and institutional support to increase their cultural and linguistic competence, yet the majority receive no specific education or support. As a result, many encounter inequities in the workforce. Research points to several elements that are essential to the education and development of SEB social workers. Th…
A structural social work approach to oral health care in Nepal
Structural social work (SSW) is a critical theory that frames poverty, violence, and disease as the product of oppressive social structures. SSW concepts were applied to a rural dentistry project in Nepal. Delivery of oral health care in Nepal is influenced by capitalist, colonialist, and scientific-modernist ideologies that disadvantage the rural poor. Jevaia Oral Health Care operationalizes SSW principles of tension relief, consciousness-raisin…
Coloniality and Intersectionality in Social Work Education and Practice
The history of social work education is deeply entangled with the structures of White supremacy and coloniality. Through an analysis of coloniality, the system from which social work operates, this article outlines an alternative framework of intersectionality, which decodes the dominant discourse in relation to power, privilege, White supremacy, and gender oppression. The framework of intersectionality moves professional social work pedagogy and…
Examining the service‐related experiences and outcomes of caregivers involved in a system of care who experienced everyday discrimination
Individuals who report everyday experiences of discrimination are at heightened risk for adverse health outcomes and tend to report underutilization of health services. Systems of care (SOCs) have the potential to engage members of minority groups and to reduce health disparities. We examined the service‐related experiences of predominantly Latinx caregivers enrolled in a SOC for their children with severe psychological health needs. We used inde…
Citizenship Status Matters: A Social Factor Influencing Outness among a Diverse National Sample of LGBT Individuals
There is a notable dearth of quantitative studies that examine the relationship between citizenship status and one’s ability to live as openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) (i.e. be ‘out’). While outness should not be prescribed as a normative or healthy sexual expression and identity, it is an option for sexual expression that can be influenced by the state. Utilising data from the Social Justice Sexuality Project, which surve…
Inequalities in US Child Protection: The Case of Sex Trafficked Youth
This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST). The response of Connecticut's child welfare system to the issue of DMST is provided as an example of how a chil…
Towards a Human Rights Culture in Social Work Education
A human rights perspective must be embedded in the institutions, organisations or agencies where social work students find themselves. This paper will focus on one particular strategy that could be helpful to the process of solidifying a commitment to human rights for our students. Using a pedagogical tool from a school of social work in the USA originally developed to combat the social injustice of racism, the example transcends the academic ins…
Cultural Competence Revisited
In 2001, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted 10 discrete standards of culturally competent practice which undergird our commitment to diversity and social justice. The concept of intersectionality is newly emerging in social work, though, causing us to reflect on our current conceptualizations of cultural competence. According to this construct, in order to understand one aspect of the self, such as race, we have to understa…
Making Room for Dynamics in Evidence-Based Practice: The Role of Psychodynamic Theory in Client-Centered Approaches
The move toward evidence-based practice has fortified, and continues to strengthen, the social work profession through accountability, greater support for social interventions, and linking research and practice. This article considers potential limitations in exclusively promoting evidence-based practice in social work programs and advocates for an integrative approach when teaching clinical practice to master of social work students. Such an app…
The Value and Purpose of the Traditional Qualitative Literature Review
Both meta-analysis and traditional literature or narrative reviews strive to compile a great deal of information in an accessible and succinct manner. In recent years, social work researchers have been turning toward meta-analysis to identify issues in large areas of research. In order for meta-analysis to be a rigorous and objective source of information there are a certain set of assumptions that must be met about how to carry out the process o…
Are Curriculum Decisions Based on the Evidence? How Social Work Faculty Members Make Choices in Curriculum Decisions
An important step in translating evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions into large-scale service improvements is to develop an understanding of practitioners' education and training in these practices. This understanding begins with discovering the factors that influence the decision-making process by social work faculty regarding curriculum content for master's level social work programs. This exploratory study uses quan…
Discourses for Social Justice Education: The Web of Racism and the Web of Resistance
This article presents two conceptual frames to help with teaching about issues of race and racism. First the concept of the web of racism describes a matrix that helps students understand the depth of damage racism has instilled in contemporary U.S. society. Second, the web of resistance offers a model of anti-racist activities to help students participate in the fight to end systemic racism. The importance of placing racism in a historical conte…
University-Community Partnerships Promoting Anti-Oppressive Action on Behalf of Latino/a Youth
This article emphasizes the effect university-community (UC) partnerships can have on addressing the oppression and discrimination of disenfranchised groups. It will present a process-outcome level, Freirian-inspired and Latino culture-focused UC partnership that seeks to promote anti-oppression strategies that benefit Latino/a youth. The model presented is based on the work of Connecticut United for Latino/a Children (CUPNL), a UC partnership cr…
On translating ourselves: Understanding dialogue and its role in social work education
This paper illustrates a pedagogical approach that enhances the development of a student's personal and professional social work identity. By utilizing three principles found in Intergroup Dialogue while learning about issues of race, racism, power and privilege, social work students are engaged in a process that encourages self‐reflection and discovery. Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a program created by the University of Michigan that facilitates…
Becoming an anti‐racist institution
This paper represents a collaborative effort by students, faculty and administration to present the major changes at the Smith College School for Social Work toward becoming an anti‐racist institution, with a specific focus on the recent three year period (1994–1997) of accelerated change coinciding with the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force. Framed by an historical context, the authors present the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force cr…
Cultural Competence Revisited
In 2001, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted 10 discrete standards of culturally competent practice which undergird our commitment to diversity and social justice. The concept of intersectionality is newly emerging in social work, though, causing us to reflect on our current conceptualizations of cultural competence. According to this construct, in order to understand one aspect of the self, such as race, we have to understa…
Coloniality and Intersectionality in Social Work Education and Practice
The history of social work education is deeply entangled with the structures of White supremacy and coloniality. Through an analysis of coloniality, the system from which social work operates, this article outlines an alternative framework of intersectionality, which decodes the dominant discourse in relation to power, privilege, White supremacy, and gender oppression. The framework of intersectionality moves professional social work pedagogy and…
Discourses for Social Justice Education: The Web of Racism and the Web of Resistance
This article presents two conceptual frames to help with teaching about issues of race and racism. First the concept of the web of racism describes a matrix that helps students understand the depth of damage racism has instilled in contemporary U.S. society. Second, the web of resistance offers a model of anti-racist activities to help students participate in the fight to end systemic racism. The importance of placing racism in a historical conte…
Becoming an anti‐racist institution
This paper represents a collaborative effort by students, faculty and administration to present the major changes at the Smith College School for Social Work toward becoming an anti‐racist institution, with a specific focus on the recent three year period (1994–1997) of accelerated change coinciding with the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force. Framed by an historical context, the authors present the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force cr…
Inequalities in US Child Protection: The Case of Sex Trafficked Youth
This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST). The response of Connecticut's child welfare system to the issue of DMST is provided as an example of how a chil…
On translating ourselves: Understanding dialogue and its role in social work education
This paper illustrates a pedagogical approach that enhances the development of a student's personal and professional social work identity. By utilizing three principles found in Intergroup Dialogue while learning about issues of race, racism, power and privilege, social work students are engaged in a process that encourages self‐reflection and discovery. Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a program created by the University of Michigan that facilitates…
Citizenship Status Matters: A Social Factor Influencing Outness among a Diverse National Sample of LGBT Individuals
There is a notable dearth of quantitative studies that examine the relationship between citizenship status and one’s ability to live as openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) (i.e. be ‘out’). While outness should not be prescribed as a normative or healthy sexual expression and identity, it is an option for sexual expression that can be influenced by the state. Utilising data from the Social Justice Sexuality Project, which surve…
Making Room for Dynamics in Evidence-Based Practice: The Role of Psychodynamic Theory in Client-Centered Approaches
The move toward evidence-based practice has fortified, and continues to strengthen, the social work profession through accountability, greater support for social interventions, and linking research and practice. This article considers potential limitations in exclusively promoting evidence-based practice in social work programs and advocates for an integrative approach when teaching clinical practice to master of social work students. Such an app…
A structural social work approach to oral health care in Nepal
Structural social work (SSW) is a critical theory that frames poverty, violence, and disease as the product of oppressive social structures. SSW concepts were applied to a rural dentistry project in Nepal. Delivery of oral health care in Nepal is influenced by capitalist, colonialist, and scientific-modernist ideologies that disadvantage the rural poor. Jevaia Oral Health Care operationalizes SSW principles of tension relief, consciousness-raisin…
Towards a Human Rights Culture in Social Work Education
A human rights perspective must be embedded in the institutions, organisations or agencies where social work students find themselves. This paper will focus on one particular strategy that could be helpful to the process of solidifying a commitment to human rights for our students. Using a pedagogical tool from a school of social work in the USA originally developed to combat the social injustice of racism, the example transcends the academic ins…
The Value and Purpose of the Traditional Qualitative Literature Review
Both meta-analysis and traditional literature or narrative reviews strive to compile a great deal of information in an accessible and succinct manner. In recent years, social work researchers have been turning toward meta-analysis to identify issues in large areas of research. In order for meta-analysis to be a rigorous and objective source of information there are a certain set of assumptions that must be met about how to carry out the process o…
Are Curriculum Decisions Based on the Evidence? How Social Work Faculty Members Make Choices in Curriculum Decisions
An important step in translating evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions into large-scale service improvements is to develop an understanding of practitioners' education and training in these practices. This understanding begins with discovering the factors that influence the decision-making process by social work faculty regarding curriculum content for master's level social work programs. This exploratory study uses quan…
Becoming an anti‐racist institution
This paper represents a collaborative effort by students, faculty and administration to present the major changes at the Smith College School for Social Work toward becoming an anti‐racist institution, with a specific focus on the recent three year period (1994–1997) of accelerated change coinciding with the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force. Framed by an historical context, the authors present the emergence of the Anti‐Racism Task Force cr…
On translating ourselves: Understanding dialogue and its role in social work education
This paper illustrates a pedagogical approach that enhances the development of a student's personal and professional social work identity. By utilizing three principles found in Intergroup Dialogue while learning about issues of race, racism, power and privilege, social work students are engaged in a process that encourages self‐reflection and discovery. Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a program created by the University of Michigan that facilitates…
University-Community Partnerships Promoting Anti-Oppressive Action on Behalf of Latino/a Youth
This article emphasizes the effect university-community (UC) partnerships can have on addressing the oppression and discrimination of disenfranchised groups. It will present a process-outcome level, Freirian-inspired and Latino culture-focused UC partnership that seeks to promote anti-oppression strategies that benefit Latino/a youth. The model presented is based on the work of Connecticut United for Latino/a Children (CUPNL), a UC partnership cr…
Discourses for Social Justice Education: The Web of Racism and the Web of Resistance
This article presents two conceptual frames to help with teaching about issues of race and racism. First the concept of the web of racism describes a matrix that helps students understand the depth of damage racism has instilled in contemporary U.S. society. Second, the web of resistance offers a model of anti-racist activities to help students participate in the fight to end systemic racism. The importance of placing racism in a historical conte…
The Value and Purpose of the Traditional Qualitative Literature Review
Both meta-analysis and traditional literature or narrative reviews strive to compile a great deal of information in an accessible and succinct manner. In recent years, social work researchers have been turning toward meta-analysis to identify issues in large areas of research. In order for meta-analysis to be a rigorous and objective source of information there are a certain set of assumptions that must be met about how to carry out the process o…
Are Curriculum Decisions Based on the Evidence? How Social Work Faculty Members Make Choices in Curriculum Decisions
An important step in translating evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions into large-scale service improvements is to develop an understanding of practitioners' education and training in these practices. This understanding begins with discovering the factors that influence the decision-making process by social work faculty regarding curriculum content for master's level social work programs. This exploratory study uses quan…
Making Room for Dynamics in Evidence-Based Practice: The Role of Psychodynamic Theory in Client-Centered Approaches
The move toward evidence-based practice has fortified, and continues to strengthen, the social work profession through accountability, greater support for social interventions, and linking research and practice. This article considers potential limitations in exclusively promoting evidence-based practice in social work programs and advocates for an integrative approach when teaching clinical practice to master of social work students. Such an app…
Cultural Competence Revisited
In 2001, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted 10 discrete standards of culturally competent practice which undergird our commitment to diversity and social justice. The concept of intersectionality is newly emerging in social work, though, causing us to reflect on our current conceptualizations of cultural competence. According to this construct, in order to understand one aspect of the self, such as race, we have to understa…
Towards a Human Rights Culture in Social Work Education
A human rights perspective must be embedded in the institutions, organisations or agencies where social work students find themselves. This paper will focus on one particular strategy that could be helpful to the process of solidifying a commitment to human rights for our students. Using a pedagogical tool from a school of social work in the USA originally developed to combat the social injustice of racism, the example transcends the academic ins…
Inequalities in US Child Protection: The Case of Sex Trafficked Youth
This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST). The response of Connecticut's child welfare system to the issue of DMST is provided as an example of how a chil…
Coloniality and Intersectionality in Social Work Education and Practice
The history of social work education is deeply entangled with the structures of White supremacy and coloniality. Through an analysis of coloniality, the system from which social work operates, this article outlines an alternative framework of intersectionality, which decodes the dominant discourse in relation to power, privilege, White supremacy, and gender oppression. The framework of intersectionality moves professional social work pedagogy and…
Examining the service‐related experiences and outcomes of caregivers involved in a system of care who experienced everyday discrimination
Individuals who report everyday experiences of discrimination are at heightened risk for adverse health outcomes and tend to report underutilization of health services. Systems of care (SOCs) have the potential to engage members of minority groups and to reduce health disparities. We examined the service‐related experiences of predominantly Latinx caregivers enrolled in a SOC for their children with severe psychological health needs. We used inde…
Citizenship Status Matters: A Social Factor Influencing Outness among a Diverse National Sample of LGBT Individuals
There is a notable dearth of quantitative studies that examine the relationship between citizenship status and one’s ability to live as openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) (i.e. be ‘out’). While outness should not be prescribed as a normative or healthy sexual expression and identity, it is an option for sexual expression that can be influenced by the state. Utilising data from the Social Justice Sexuality Project, which surve…
A structural social work approach to oral health care in Nepal
Structural social work (SSW) is a critical theory that frames poverty, violence, and disease as the product of oppressive social structures. SSW concepts were applied to a rural dentistry project in Nepal. Delivery of oral health care in Nepal is influenced by capitalist, colonialist, and scientific-modernist ideologies that disadvantage the rural poor. Jevaia Oral Health Care operationalizes SSW principles of tension relief, consciousness-raisin…
Coloniality of power, critical realism and critical consciousness: The three “C” framework
Typical pedagogical practices center Whiteness, particularly when teaching about racism and racial justice. This article offers a framework that de-centers the White frame using: coloniality of power, critical realism, critical consciousness. The coloniality of power analyzes the order of social relations and embedded hegemonic structures in the US. Critical realism posits a multi-layered construct of reality encompassing subjugated experiences, …
Educating Bilingual Social Workers for the Child Welfare Workforce: A Distributive Justice Approach
Spanish/English bilingual (SEB) speaking social workers are in high demand, particularly in the area of Child Welfare. Most require training and institutional support to increase their cultural and linguistic competence, yet the majority receive no specific education or support. As a result, many encounter inequities in the workforce. Research points to several elements that are essential to the education and development of SEB social workers. Th…
Liberating Social Work Education Through Decoloniality
Within Social Work education, there has been a rising call for decoloniality. Among the areas most frequently targeted for transformation are the privileging of Christian Euro-centric sources of knowledge and means of transmission, Christian Euro-centric relational norms and behaviors, Euro-centric standards of excellence and professionalism. The origin of coloniality is steeped in four pillars, White Supremacy, Patriarchy, Capitalism and Christi…
The use of critical theory in social work international study program: Instilling racial and epistemic justice
This paper presents an example of transformative learning afforded to social work students participating in an international study program between United States and Germany focusing on Genocide and the Holocaust. Using epistemic justice as a frame, it foregrounds the experience of a Black female social work student who was the target of microaggressions while abroad and highlights the critical theories, such as critical consciousness, critical re…
Towards a socially engaged mindfulness pedagogical approach to anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work education
This paper explores the potential of a socially engaged mindfulness (SEM) pedagogical approach in anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work education. The authors examine mindfulness steeped in a socially engaged and critical consciousness-raising context among social work graduate students in the US enrolled in a course on oppression. Qualitative data was gathered through feedback surveys across three years. Reflexive thematic analysis reveale…
Critical Hope and Resistance through Collective Poetic Inquiry: A Response to Federal Attacks on Queer and Trans Communities by Scholar-Advocates
In early 2025, the US federal government made sweeping and targeted attacks that affect queer, trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive (QT and TGE) communities across the United States with the most harmful attacks directed at TGE youth and adults and those situated at marginalized sociostructural intersections. As scholars in an academic social work program who sit at the intersections of marginalized sociostructural locations, are allies/accompl…
Co-Designing a Socially Engaged Mindfulness Intervention for Social Work Students: A Participatory Research Note
Mindfulness practice has strong potential to enhance social work education: the practices enhance wellbeing and may also support capacity for social action (e.g., advocacy, community organizing). This research note centers our participatory approach—a best practice but underutilized in mindfulness research—in developing a socially engaged mindfulness (SEM) intervention for social workers. We detail our collaborative process with a Social Work Stu…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (14 works) · Pedagogy (11 works) · Social Work (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Politics (7 works)