Doctoral Candidate Noor Toraif (’23) Receives SSWR’s 2022 Doctoral Fellows Award

Noor Toraif, BUSSW doctoral candidate and research fellow at the school’s Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health (CISWH), has received the 2022 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Doctoral Fellows Award – recognizing and supporting doctoral students whose proposed dissertation research reflects innovative ideas and rigorous methodologies related to social work research, policy, or practice. Award recipients are considered exemplars of excellence in doctoral-level social work research. 

The prestigious early-career award is made in support of Toraif’s dissertation, “In-Routes and “On the Outs:” Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color’s Racialized Transition Experiences from the Child Welfare System to the Juvenile Justice System and During Community Reentry,” and is accompanied by an honorarium.

Toraif, who expects to complete her doctorate degree in 2023, is also a graduate fellow and affiliate at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. She earned her master’s degree in Child Development at Tufts University, specializing in children and families’ programs and policies. Her research draws from socio-legal theories and developmental theory to understand youth and young adults’ experiences in the US child welfare, juvenile, and criminal justice systems.

She is specifically interested in the experiences of youth transitioning into, out of, and between state agencies such as the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system, and how these transitions shape youths’ development and future life trajectories. Her secondary interests include policing and criminal justice, Youth Participatory Action Research, youth resistance to racism, and social theory.

Noor is currently involved in several research projects including two Youth Participatory Action Research projects on the school to prison pipeline, a Youth Advisory Board project on medical mistrust and intergenerational trauma, a project on Transition Age Youths’ reentry experiences during COVID-19, and a project on Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color reentry experiences in Massachusetts.

In 2021, she was named a Pardee Center Graduate Fellow. This competitive ten-week fellowship allows students to conduct independent research and produce a substantive research paper that may be considered for publication by the Pardee Center. Toraif’s research and paper examined the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color navigating reentry in Massachusetts from the juvenile justice system including services from both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

In 2020, she was selected for the competitive Public Policy Summer Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston where she completed a joint placement with two agencies: the Youth Advocacy Division (YAD) of the Committee for Public Counsel Services and the Office of the Child Advocate. 

Along with other SSWR award winners, Toraif will be honored at the 2022 SSWR Annual Conference in Washington, DC Jan. 12-16.