Monica Griffin
Director of Engaged Scholarship and the Sharpe Community Scholars Program; Affiliate, American Studies
Phone:
757-221-2669
E-mail:
[[e|mdgrif]]
Research Interests:
Participatory Action Research, Health Inequality, Narrative Medicine, Race and Culture, Family Systems Theory
Biography
Monica D. Griffin received a B.A. in English and Sociology from William & Mary (’88) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Virginia. As director of the Sharpe Community Scholars program at W&M, she develops curriculum that trains students to conduct community-based research, cultivates faculty development in mentoring undergraduates for participatory action research, and provides oversight for experiential-learning coordination in the living-learning program.
Her teaching includes the following areas: health inequality & disparities, medical sociology, narrative medicine; race, culture, identity, and literary social change; qualitative research methods and participatory action research.
She has published in books and journals about: the African American literary canon, faculty development in service-learning programs, confronting racial and gendered silence in higher education careers, participatory justice in addressing inequality in higher education, women’s treatment in healthcare, brown bodied pain, and the role of community health workers for addressing social determinants of health (inequality). As a graduate of Georgetown University’s postgraduate program at the Center for the Study of the Family, she frequently makes presentations on the synthesis of family systems theory (FST) with sociological analysis in understanding family, organizational, and community dynamics.
