Loretta Pyles
Associate Professor
Social Welfare
University at Albany
United States of America
Biography
Pyles' scholarship centers on the ways that individuals, organizations and communities resist and respond to poverty, violence and disasters in a policy context of neoliberal economic globalization and social welfare retrenchment. She draws from critical, social constructionist and feminist traditions to inform her research and utilizes a range of research methods including conceptual, qualitative, participatory action research, and quantitative. Pyles is the author of Progressive Community Organizing: A Critical Approach for a Globalizing World (Routledge, 2009) and more than 30 articles and book chapters. In Progressive Community Organizing, 2nd Edition (2013), she introduces the pioneering transformative organizing framework, which affirms critical and compassionate inquiry into self and society. She is also a certified yoga instructor and is interested in ways that spiritual practices can facilitate change.
Research Interest
Economic justice; gender-based violence; disaster and social inequality; community organizing
Publications
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Pyles, Loretta L.. (2016, April (2nd Quarter/Spring)) Decolonising Disaster Social Work: Environmental Justice and Community Participation. . British Journal of Social Work.
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Lawson, Hal A., , James, Pyles, Loretta L., Jurkowski, Janine M., Bozlak, Christine T.. (2015, January (1st Quarter/Winter) 22) Participatory Action Research New York: Oxford University Press.
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Pyles, Loretta L., Adam, Gwendolyn. (2016, January (1st Quarter/Winter)) Holistic Engagement: Transformative Social Work Education in the 21st Century Oxford University Press.
