Curtis Center Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Odessa Gonzalez Benson is Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work-Ann Arbor and Faculty of the U-M Detroit School of Urban Studies. Dr. Gonzalez Benson’s areas of research are: refugee resettlement policy and service provision, migrant/refugee-led grassroots organizations and participatory approaches to governance, state-civil society relations, and critical policy studies. Dr. Gonzalez Benson pursues theoretical work integrating social welfare and community-based perspectives in refugee studies and citizenship theory.
One current project is a place-based, multi-methods study that examines functions, infrastructure/technologies and socio-spatial locations of migrant/refugee-led organizations, conceptualized as an assemblage with both materiality and emergent capacities. Another project examines ‘resettlement geographies’ in the post-9/11 era of resettlement in the U.S., exploring the tensions between the economic (labor) and socio-political dimensions to refugee resettlement and immigration. Dr. Gonzalez Benson has a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Washington-Seattle and BA from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Current Research Interests:
- Refugee studies & social work with refugees
- Resettlement policy
- Community engaged research
- Policy analyses
- Citizenship theory
- Multiple methods
- Discourse analysis
Website | Email | Phone: 734-763-2345
Research Areas: Refugees, Community Engagement, Policy Analysis and Translation,