Cindy Sousa

Cindy Sousa, PhD, MSW, MPH (she/her) is a full, tenured Professor at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR) and the co-director of the Center for Child and Family Wellbeing at Bryn Mawr College. In her work, Cindy promotes understanding about the conditions underlying health, using a lens informed by feminist, post-colonial, and critical race theories that prioritize the social, environmental, and political contexts of well-being.

Cindy’s scholarship highlights the mental health implications of violations to the lived environment; the effects of violence and oppression on parenting (particularly mothering); the importance of culture, place, and social and organizational supports in responding to the health effects of adversity; and professional responsibility in the face of collective suffering.

Author or co-author of more than 35 publications in peer-reviewed journals, Cindy’s latest projects focus on the lived experience of parenting within disasters and wars, and the varied ways parents protect themselves, their children, cultures, and communities. Her research includes field work and original data collection she did in collaboration with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, one of the oldest and largest healthcare NGOs in Palestine. Among other projects, she has also led community-based studies with refugee service providers in Philadelphia and disaster case managers after massive wildfires in the west coast of the United States, and has partnered with other scholars to do research focused on political violence and wellbeing among women and children in Palestine, Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and social workers in Ukraine.

Cindy has served leadership roles within the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR). Cindy co-chairs the Palestine Health Justice Working Group, within the International Health Section of APHA. In 2021, she was inducted as a SSWR Fellow, which honors members who have “served with distinction to advance the mission of the Society.” Cindy is a Research Affiliate at two international labs: the Global Adversity and Wellbeing Research Group at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, Canada (current project focused on mothering among displaced Rohingya families in Bangladesh) and the Health Conflict Psychology Lab at The University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy (current project focused on feminist and anti-colonial approaches to research partnerships in Palestine, and analysis of narratives from women in Gaza, looking at family strengths and patterns related to the ongoing siege).

At our GSSWSR, Cindy convenes and teaches throughout our macro concentration, and also teaches social policy; power, privilege, and oppression; and other courses on trauma, global social work, and international public health. Within our PhD program, Cindy works with several PhD students and teaches in our social theory and qualitative research sequences. As in her research, her teaching focuses on the importance of anti-oppressive practice and reflexivity, using deep understandings of power and positionality from an intersectional lens.