Sam Harrell, MSW, PhD

• Sam Harrell CV

Sam Harrell, MSW, PhD (they/them) is an Assistant Professor at Seattle University. They received their BSW and MSW from Indiana University and their PhD from Portland State University. Sam's practice experience spans many fields, including child welfare, prison and jail re-entry, low-barrier shelter services, LGBTQ+ youth services, violence prevention, legal advocacy, and crisis intervention. They have taught across the curriculum at several universities, and particularly enjoy teaching research and community practice. Sam is a first-generation college student from Kentuckiana determined to make higher education welcoming and meet learners where they are. Sam's scholarship is rooted in prison industrial complex abolition and anarchist values. Their research examines social work's relationship to the criminal legal system. Their archival research explores the Progressive Era history of social workers as policewomen and prison wardens. They are working on a book about one such prison warden whose work challenged anti/carceral feminist frameworks. Sam also researches the harms of mandated reporting and the pseudo-therapeutic program "Moral Reconation Therapy." They are an Editorial Board member for the journals Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work and Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work.