BUSSW Announces First 2007/08 Social Welfare Analysis Colloquium

The Boston University School of Social Work is pleased to announce its first Social Welfare Analysis Colloquium of the 2007/2008 academic year on Thursday, September 20, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. The colloquium–The Organizational Culture, Staff Practices, and Social Capital in Transitional Housing Programs for the Homeless in Los Angeles and Tokyo–will be presented by Dr. Matthew Marr and will be held in the School’s Conant Lounge (2nd floor) at 264 Bay State Road, Boston.

Dr. Marr currently is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in June 2007, his M.A. in Sociology with a focus on Urban Sociology from Howard University in May 1997, and his B.A. in Government and Japanese, with a minor in East Asian Studies, from the University of Notre Dame in 1993. He has engaged in extensive work with agencies aiding the homeless in several cities in the U.S. and Japan.

Dr. Marr’s dissertation examines the persistence of mass urban homelessness in leading cities of the global economy, and he discusses the experiences and outcomes of the efforts to exit homelessness by people in Tokyo and Los Angeles. He considers how forces at multiple levels of analysis, from the global to the individual, impact the homeless condition. While researching at the Reischauer Institute, he will build upon this current framework to further explore factors and processes effecting homelessness in Tokyo and Los Angeles at the micro-social, individual, and local policy levels.

Faculty co-chairs of the colloquium are Professors Kate Cooney and Marah Curtis. For more information, please contact Professor Cooney at kcooney@bu.edu