Summary
Dr. Ratliff studies power dynamics through social ecologies that contribute to marginalization, violence, and health disparities. They pay attention to multiscalar social processes and social determinants of health, from micro-level, downstream outcomes affecting people’s lives to macro-level, upstream factors and systems. Dr. Ratliff is a critical, queer, place-based, person-centered, post-structuralist scholar, whose participatory research approaches with transgender young people and young people experiencing homelessness have centered young people as the experts of their own experiences. Dr. Ratliff uses qualitative and geospatial methodologies to better understand how power, policy, violence, and marginalization operate in the lives of marginalized and vulnerable young people. Dr. Ratliff’s teaching emphasizes trauma-responsive, social-ecological, person-centered perspectives in social work practice, supporting social work students in learning to observe and understand the complexities of how the social environment impacts the everyday lives of the people they serve.
Areas of interest
- Power, operations and theories
- Geospatial data and methodologies
- Place-based research, practice, and policy
- Violence and marginalization
- Gender, gender identity, and transgender youth experiences
- Housing, homelessness, and services for unhoused youth
Research collaborations
Co-Director, Queer Social Work Lab.
Select publications
Ratliff, G. A., Harvey, T. L., Jeffcoat, N., Sarabia, R., Yang, J. O., Lightfoot, M., Adams, S., Lund, I., & Auerswald, C. L. (2023). The deployment of discretionary power in the prevention and enactment of structural violence against young people experiencing homelessness. Child Abuse & Neglect.
Ratliff, G. A., Graaf, G., & Choy-Brown, M. (2023) Orienting social work toward place-based principles: A practical guide to the use of place in social work practice. Journal of Social Work.
Ratliff, G. A., Sousa, C., Graaf, G., Akesson, B., & Kemp, S. (2022) Reconsidering the role of place in health and welfare services: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and Canada. Social-Ecological Practice Research. doi.org/10.1007/s42532-022-00111-z
Gómez, A.M., Hooker, N., Olip-Booth, R., Woerner, P., Ratliff, G. A. (2021) “It’s Being Compassionate, Not Making Assumptions”: Transmasculine and Nonbinary Young Adults’ Experiences of “Women’s” Healthcare Settings. Women’s Health Issues.
Ratliff, G. A. (2019). Social work, place, and power: Applying heterotopian principles to the social topology of social work. Social Service Review, 93(4), 640-677. doi.org/10.1086/706808
Chambers, J., & Ratliff, G. A. (2019). Structural competency in child welfare: Opportunities and applications for addressing disparities and stigma. The Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 46(4), 26.
Selected book chapters
Ratliff, G. A., & Kelly, B.L. (2021). Strengths-Affirming Social Work Practice with LGBTQ Youth. In M. P. Dentato (Ed.). Social work practice with the LGBTQ community: The intersection of history, health, mental health and policy factors. Second Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Selected podcast episodes
Place-Based Research: Why place matters. CRSP Talk podcast.
With Bree Akesson, Genevive Graaf, Susan Kemp, and Cindy Sousa
October 15, 2021. Centre for Research on Security Practices, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Education
- Ph.D., School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley
- MSW, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois-Chicago; Certificate in Evidence-Based Mental Health Practice with Children and Adolescents
- B.A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln