PhD Spotlight: Kortney Carr

Relief. Happiness. Gratitude.
Emotions continue to hit Dr. Kortney Carr (she/her) after she successfully passed her dissertation defense and earned her Doctor of Philosophy in social work from the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare in late October.
Dr. Carr will tell you that her journey to social work is a surprising one. She got her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Central Missouri and didn’t see social work as her initial path. But Dr. Carr cites the wellness of Black men, trauma and hope as her scholarly interests.
Those interests led her to KU and the Ph.D. program.
“Once I’m exposed to something, my interest takes off,” Dr. Carr said. “The decision to get my Ph.D. was made once I knew the research area that I wanted to focus on. I know people usually say that changes, but for me, my topic area never actually changed.”
Dr. Carr was awarded the Toni Johnson Scholars for Racial Justice Dissertation Award for her research, which is titled “The Influence of Societal Discourses about Black Men on Social Work Practice.” In her dissertation, she examined how social workers construct Black men in their practice narratives, how those constructions reflect broader societal discourse and how social workers' narratives of their practice are informed by their constructions of Black men.
Dr. Carr also received the CSWE Doctoral Fellowship from the Minority Fellowship Program in 2023.
“We have a social justice focus,” Dr. Carr said. “I am still saying that our practice, based on some of the results with Black men, really needs to be looked at.” She said the research that focuses on Black men is limited, and she wants to help identify why social workers need to do the research.
Helping social workers better understand the nuance of this topic isn’t easy, but Dr. Carr is used to tasks that aren’t easy.
She considers her Ph.D. path to be unique in that she worked full-time in multiple roles during the process. Dr. Carr, an associate professor of practice at the School of Social Welfare, had to navigate significant conflicts during that stretch.
Dr. Carr knows this is also just a checkpoint, even if it is an accomplishment worthy of celebrating. She wants her contributions to help her students, colleagues, fellow social workers and social work education.
The School of Social Welfare offered Dr. Carr a unique opportunity with the Ph.D. program.
“I really did choose KU because I felt it was going to give me the research experience and exposure that I needed and was looking for,” Dr. Carr said.
She intends to make the most of it.