David S. Byers

David S. Byers, Ph.D., MSW, LCSW, is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College. His scholarship focuses on contested care ethics in mental health, social services, and medical contexts, especially in response to stigma, precarity, and dehumanization in both U.S. and international settings. Byers theorizes care as a complex and often conflicted practice, shaped by social power, emotional contradiction, and competing ethical demands. He is particularly interested in how ethical tensions give rise to clinical innovation and what he terms “clinical activism”—ethically grounded forms of micro-resistance within community-based practice.

Byers’s work also focuses on ethical emotions, especially anxiety, in clinical relationships as well as youth and adult development.His current writing investigates the roles of moral strain, dissociation, and reflexivity in the formation of identity in relational psychotherapy. His research explores how emotions function not only as reactions but as meaningful, embodied, and socio-politically situated ethical signals. Beyond the clinical realm, he has also investigated how adolescents respond to witnessing bullying and aggression and sometimes try to help targeted peers despite nervousness.

Across these projects, Byers contributes a critical, theory-driven, and interdisciplinary lens to practice-based and translational research. His work has appeared in flagship journals across social work, sociology, and psychology, including Social Service Review, Social Science & Medicine, American Psychologist, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma. He has also contributed guest essays on queer- and trans-affirmative social work and psychotherapy to The New York Times, Slate, and Time. His work speaks to scholars, clinicians, educators, and policymakers building more just and depth-oriented approaches to care work.

Byers completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research at Cornell University and was a 2024 Visitor at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He is currently a candidate at New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.

At Bryn Mawr, Byers teaches clinical theory and practice in the MSS program and research methods in the PhD program. He also affiliates with the International Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies programs. His work as an educator and scholar is informed by extensive clinical and supervisory experience in community clinics, universities, academic hospitals, and private practice.

Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• Fareed, A., Byers, D. S., & Hreish, L. (2025). Too close for comfort: Intergenerational blame and disillusionment in social work supervision in the West Bank, Palestine. Social Science & Medicine. [Advance online publication].
• Vartanian, T., Byers, D. S., Shapiro, J., & Solo, C. (2024). The effects of relative income deprivation and low income on adult mental health. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. [Advance online publication].
• Kumaria, S., Byers, D. S., McCarthy, K., & Moedano, C. (2023). Social identity as a factor in bystander responses to bias-based verbal aggression among college students. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 32(10), 1393–1411. 
• Byers, D. S., Fareed, A., & Hreish, K. (2022). The vernacular ethics of stigmatized care: Reinterpreting acceptance and confidentiality for social work in the West Bank, Palestine. Social Service Review, 96(1), 73–109. 
• Byers, D. S., & Cerulli, M. (2021). Staying in their own lane: Ethical reasoning among college students witnessing cyberbullying. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(4), 508–518. 
• Byers, D. S., Mishna, F., & Solo, C. (2021). Clinical practice with children and adolescents involved with bullying and cyberbullying: Gleaning guidelines from the literature. Clinical Social Work Journal. 
• Byers, D. S., McInroy, L. B., Craig, S. L., Slates, S., & Kattari, S. K. (2020). Naming and addressing homophobic and transphobic microaggressions in social work classrooms. Journal of Social Work Education.
• Byers, D. S., Vider, S., & Smith, E. (2019). Clinical activism in community-based practice: The case of LGBT affirmative care at the Eromin Center, Philadelphia, 1973– 1984. American Psychologist, 74(8), 868–881
• Byers, D. S., & Shapiro, J. R. (2019). Renewing the ethics of care for social work under the Trump administration. Social Work, 64(2), 175–180.
• Byers, D. S., Coburn, J., Hurvitz-Prinz, A., & Hustead, P. (2017). Learning together: A dialogue on collaborative MSW thesis advising. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 87(4), 345–349
• Byers, D. S. (2016). Recognition of social pain among peers: Rethinking the role of bystanders in bullying and cyberbullying. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 86(4), 335–354.
• Kokaliari, E., Berzoff, J., Byers, D. S., Fareed, A., Berzoff-Cohen, J., & Hreish, K. (2016). Teaching clinical social work under occupation: Listening to the voices of Palestinian social work students. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 36(2), 140– 159.
• Byers, D. S. (2013). “Do they see nothing wrong with this?”: Bullying, bystander complicity, and the role of homophobic bias in the Tyler Clementi case. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 94(4), 251–258

Book Chapters

• Byers, D. S., & Fareed, A. (2024). Should life in refugee camps feel ‘normal?’: The ethical stakes of social work among displaced Palestinians. In L. V. McLaughlin & C. Robbins (Eds.), Tania El Khoury’s live art: Collaborative knowledge production. Amherst College Press. 
• Hertz, P., Flanagan, L. M., Byers, D. S., & Berzoff, J. (2021). The bridge: From theory to practice. In J. Berzoff, L. M. Flanagan, & P. Hertz (Eds.), Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic clinical theory and psychopathology in contemporary multicultural contexts (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
• Byers, D. S., Thigpen, K. Z., & Wolfson, S. (2019). Working with LGBTQIA+ clients in the context of trauma, with a focus on transgender experience. In S. Ringel & J. Brandell (Eds.), Trauma: Contemporary directions in theory, practice, and research (2nd ed.). Columbia University Press.
• Byers, D. S. (2016). DSM-5 and the role of descriptive diagnosis. In J. Berzoff, L. M. Flanagan, & P. Hertz (Eds.), Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic clinical theory and psychopathology in contemporary multicultural contexts (4th ed., pp. 318–329). Rowman & Littlefield.