Faculty

Laura Lein, Ph.D., is Katherine Reebel Collegiate Professor of Social Work and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She served as Dean of the School of Social work 2009-2016. She came to Michigan from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work where she taught for 24 years. She has taught in the areas of social policy, social work research, and community organization and participatory research. Her research has concentrated on the interface between families in poverty and the institutions that serve them. Her research on families in poverty has extended over three decades.  She is currently working on the background and experiences of panhandlers. She co-authored (with Ron Angel, Holy Bell, and Julie Beausoleil) Community Lost (Cambridge University Press, 2012) about Hurricane Katrina survivors, and also has written (with Ronald Angel and Jane Henrici) Poor Families in America’s Health Care Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Life After Welfare (with Deanna Schexnadyer, University of Texas Press, 2007). She is the author, with Kathryn Edin, of Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997).

Ph.D. Harvard University; M.A. Harvard University; B.A. Swarthmore College