Kortney A. Carr

Kortney A. Carr, Ph.D., LCSW, LSCSW, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare and a licensed clinical social worker in Kansas and Missouri. As a scholar-practitioner, she brings more than 20 years of direct clinical experience in trauma and mental health to her teaching, scholarship, and service. Her professional experience also includes clinical supervision, training, and consultation.

Dr. Carr’s scholarship examines how history, lived experiences, language, worldviews, and professional knowledge shape social work practice, education, and systems. She is particularly interested in how historical and contemporary understandings of race shape social work’s approaches to racial equity and influence practice with Black men and their overall well-being. Her scholarship is grounded in racial equity and informed by decades of direct clinical practice, allowing her to connect academic inquiry with the realities experienced by clients, social workers, and communities.

As an educator, Dr. Carr encourages students to integrate critical reflection, clinical reasoning, and structural analysis into ethical and culturally responsive practice. Ultimately, across her teaching, scholarship, and practice, she aims to identify and challenge assumptions embedded within social work and contribute to more critically conscious, culturally responsive, and equitable approaches to education, practice, policy, and service delivery.