Ashley Cureton, PhD, MSW

Ashley Cureton (she/her) is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to her current role, she was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in the School of Education and the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Ashley identifies as a forced migration and international social work scholar who seeks to identify culturally specific interventions, programs, and policies to improve the educational, socio-emotional, and environmental outcomes of refugee youth and their families in the U.S and abroad. By engaging in community-based participatory research, she is further interested in the role of institutions (e.g., resettlement agencies, refugee-led organizations, schools) in supporting the distinct needs of these vulnerable groups. Finally, Ashley explores how displacement and exploitation impact their overall academic and social development and racial and cultural identities. Her research builds on over a decade of research and practice focusing on child and adolescent development among refugee and migrant populations in global contexts like South Africa, Zambia, Lebanon, Jordan, India, and the United States. Prior to attending graduate school, Ashley worked as a research associate at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research. She also served as a research fellow for the U.S. Department of State in Istanbul, Turkey, working with Iraqi and Syrian refugee youth in school and community settings. Dr. Cureton received a PhD and master’s degree from the Crown School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. She also received graduate certificates in forced migration and refugee mental health from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and Northwestern University.