S.P.A.R.K.

Dr. Tarkington J Newman is an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Social Work, where they serve as Director of the Sport Social Work Research Lab (SSW-RL) and Co-Director of the International Institute for Sport & Behavioral Health. Through the SSW-RL, Dr. Newman is committed to serving youth populations (ages 10-24) who are socially vulnerable and/or at-risk for behavioral and mental health problems. Their research seeks to actively engage historically-oppressed populations including youth of color, youth from economically disadvantaged urban communities, and LGBTQ+ youth. Specifically, Dr. Newman’s research focuses on promoting critical positive youth development (CPYD) through sport and other forms of physical activity. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, their research investigates mechanisms that promote the development and transfer of normative life skills (e.g., emotional regulation, communication, teamwork, leadership) and social justice life skills (e.g., antiracism, LGBTQ+ allyship, healthy masculinity, mental health literacy).

Rebecca L. Bosetti, PhD, MSW is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. Bosetti completed her PhD in Social Work at The Ohio State University in 2020 after defending her dissertation entitled Maltreatment, Emotional Responses to Abuse, and Trauma Among Adolescents Engaging in Sexual or Non-Sexual Delinquency. Dr. Bosetti’s dissertation received funding through the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Pre-doctoral Research Grant. Dr. Bosetti’s research explores developmental antecedents to juvenile delinquency behaviors, the role of childhood maltreatment victimization and trauma in the etiology of adolescent offending, and emotional processing risk factors that differentiate youth who commit general delinquent offenses from youth who engage in sexually abusive behaviors. Moreover, she is actively engaged in providing sex-positive education to students across social science disciplines to highlight the role of socially just and inclusive sex education as a tool of primary sexual violence prevention. Her study on reimagining community-based sex educators has been funder by The Spencer Foundation, a leading and nationally competitive funder of transformative educational research. Dr. Bosetti serves on the editorial board of Sexual Abuse, : A Journal of Research and Treatment, and will continue researching the safety and victimization experiences of juvenile justice involved youth in the hopes of informing the implementation of developmentally responsive juvenile justice practices.

I am an assistant professor in the College of Social Work. My primary areas of research include housing and homelessness, substance use, and mental health. Specifically, I am interested in how we can improve our homelessness response systems to address and end homelessness in our communities. I primarily use community-engaged, qualitative, and mixed-methods in my research.

Aubrey Jones earned her PhD in Social Work from the University of Tennessee in 2020, her Master of Social Work from Florida State University, and her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from the University of Montana. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky, where she focuses on rural communities, family wellbeing, and maternal and perinatal mental health.

Dr. Quiring has spent over 15 years as advocate, educator, and attorney across various stages of the criminal legal system. More specifically, working and advocating in spaces where a person experiencing mental health crisis intersects with the criminal legal system. Her dissertation, Living with serious mental illness, police encounters, and relationships of power: A critical phenomenological study, was published in 2021. Dr. Quiring received her Juris Doctorate from the Howard University School of Law and her PhD from Indiana University School of Social Work. As a translational scholar, her current areas of research, writing, and teaching include: community-based mental health crisis response, abolitionist feminist praxis, critical phenomenology, interpretative phenomenological analysis, collective wellness, mental health law & policy, Crisis Intervention Teams, police, criminal legal system, 4th and 5th amendment issues, state violence, power relationships, death penalty.

Dr. Carlyn (Carly) Kimiecik is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, where she also serves as the Assistant Director of the Sport Social Work Research Lab. Carly explores the experiences of youth and student-athletes at the intersections of health, wellbeing, and development. Using strength-based and community-engaged approaches, she aims to understand how the social work profession can effectively collaborate in these areas. Outside of academia, Carly has over ten years of experience in youth programming and college athletics.