Dr. Amy Habeger is a professor of social work and the director of the Doctor of Social Work (DSW) program at Delaware State University, a historically Black university in the United States. She is a licensed clinical social worker with more than 20 years of practical experience in community mental health, integrated care, crisis response, homelessness, and services for women and children. Her academic and professional work focuses on strengthening social work education, community-engaged research, behavioral health practice, and the preparation of practitioner-scholars who can translate research into meaningful change. Her scholarship and teaching also explore equity, anti-racist practice, implementation of evidence-informed interventions, and the ways in which social work education can better respond to the communities it serves. As a Fulbright Specialist, Dr. Habeger is currently collaborating with the faculty and students at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru through teaching, mentoring, research, and scholarly exchange. Her project aims to build relationships that can support future international collaborations.
Field of Study USA: Social Work
Aesha John
Dr. Aesha John is a professor of social work at Texas Christian University (TCU), where she teaches courses on care across the lifespan and an elective on grief and loss. Her scholarship focuses on disability, inclusion, parenting, and children’s media use, with a particular emphasis on understanding the lived experiences of families of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
Dr. John’s research spans multiple cultural contexts, including the United States and India. Her work aims to advance culturally responsive frameworks that center family strengths, improve service delivery, and promote inclusive practices. Her recent work examines children’s media use and parent–child relationships, highlighting how digital engagement intersects with family dynamics and children’s social–emotional development.
Her research has been widely published in leading journals on IDD, including the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders and the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. She has received the Disability Manuscript Award from the Council on Social Work Education and the Deans’ Award for Research and Creativity from TCU. She has also received grant funding twice from the Jerry M.D. Lewis Foundation, most recently to support her study on children’s media use and parent–child relationships.
Beyond research and teaching, Dr. John is committed to community engagement and experiential learning. She has led a book club for individuals with IDD and facilitated a job training program for individuals with IDD on the TCU campus. She regularly creates opportunities for her students to engage with vulnerable populations in the community, thereby fostering meaningful, relationship-centered learning experiences that bridge classroom knowledge with real-world practice.
Dr. John’s Fulbright-Nehru project is combining teaching and research to advance cross-cultural understanding of parenting and IDD. She is delivering modules on IDD and lifespan development to psychology and social work students at Christ University, Bengaluru. Her research is also examining parental reactions to their children’s autism diagnosis. Further, she is exploring how families understand, process, and adapt to a diagnosis across cultural contexts, with the aim of informing culturally sensitive, family-centered support and interventions.
Jessica Gladden
Dr. Jessica Gladden has a PhD in social work from Michigan State University and an MSW from Grand Valley State University. She has had a variety of clinical experiences in private practice with the Fountain Hill Center for Counseling and Consultation in Michigan. She has also taught trauma-informed yoga at Grand Rapids Healing Yoga and has worked as a therapist at the YWCA and several other agencies. Besides, she is the founder and executive director of Thrive: A Refugee Support Program.
Dr. Gladden has multiple publications and presentations to her credit on topics such coping strategies related to refugees; somatic interventions in the form of yoga-based therapy; and teaching trauma content in higher education. She is certified in trauma-sensitive yoga and as a clinical trauma professional.
In her Fulbright fellowship at Christ University in Bengaluru, Dr. Gladden is dividing her time between research and teaching. She is participating in qualitative research that seeks to gain understanding on how yoga is being used as a therapeutic intervention in India and comparing this to what takes place in the United States. She is also teaching one course through the Department of Sociology and Social Work. In addition, Dr. Gladden is working with at least one of the university’s projects through the Centre for Social Action.