Joan T. Pennell
North Carolina State University
Professor Emerita
Biographical Abstracts
Joan Pennell, Ph.D., M.S.W., professor emerita of social work, was head of the Department of Social Work and founding director of the Center for Family and Community Engagement at North Carolina State University. At the Center, she has continued her long-term role as evaluator of North Carolina Community Child Protection teams (citizen review panels). She taught previously at the University of Manitoba, School of Social Work, and Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work, where she also served as interim director. She has a strong track record of work on domestic violence, child welfare, and community-based approaches to research. She is a founding member of the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship. She has received funding for work on family meetings, restorative approaches to intimate partner violence, fathering in the context of domestic violence, family-centered practice training and evaluation, and foster youth and educational success.
Pennell has over 200 publications and co-authored Community Research as Empowerment: Feminist Links, Postmodern Interruptions (Oxford University Press); Widening the Circle: The Practice and Evaluation of Family Group Conferencing with Children, Youths, and Their Families (NASW Press); Family Group Conferencing: Evaluation Guidelines (American Humane Association); Safety, Fairness, Stability: Repositioning Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare to Engage Families and Communities (Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform); and A National Portrait Of Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence: Pathways to Safety, Accountability, Healing, and Well-Being (Center for Court Innovation).
Areas of Expertise
- Intimate partner violence
- Child welfare
- Restorative justice
- Family group conferencing
- Citizen review panels