Lisa Young Larance
Academic Departments
Education
- B.A., Smith College
- M.S.W., The Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, MO
- International Fulbright Funded Fieldwork: Bangladesh
- Ph.D., University of Michigan, Joint Degree in Social Work & Sociology
- Dissertation: Talking Back to the Web of Power: Women’s Legal, Child Protection, and Antiviolence Intervention Entanglement and Resistance
Areas of Focus
Antiviolence Intervention, Intimate Partner Violence, Gender, Sexuality, Race, Criminalization
Biography
Lisa Young Larance, PhD, LCSW, LMSW, has extensive direct practice experience serving the needs of people who have survived and caused harm in their relationships.
A leader in the antiviolence intervention field, Dr. Young Larance’s work shapes innovative community- and prison-based services for diverse violence-involved women. Her scholarship explores topics at the intersection of intimate partner violence, gender, sexuality, criminalization, race, and intervention, while centering the experiences of legal- and child protection systems-involved women who have both survived and caused harm in their intimate relationships.
The goal of Dr. Young Larance’s scholarship is to work beyond the victim-offender binary in dismantling systems of oppression while partnering with individuals, organizations, and communities to advance the well-being of vulnerable people.
Her work is published in a range of forums including Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, BMJ Open, International Social Work, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Psychology of Violence, Violence Against Women, and Qualitative Social Work.
Dr. Young Larance's book, Broken: Women's Stories of Intimate and Institutional Harm and Repair won the 2026 Society for Social Work and Research Best Scholarly Book Award.