Terri Lewinson, PhD

Dr. Lewinson earned her Bachelor’s degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of South Carolina, and Masters and PhD degrees from the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. Dr. Lewinson has over a decade of social work practice in healthcare settings and communities of low-income and overwhelmed families. She is a skilled qualitative social work researcher with a community-based focus. Dr. Lewinson builds collaborative relationships with policy makers and constituents to create change for people challenged with homelessness and unstable housing conditions. She has several years of experience conducting systematic observations, in-depth interviews, and focus groups using innovative and empowering visual data collection strategies, such as photovoice, which is effective in making hidden and shared environmental concerns more visible and motivating residents to become change agents. Her published work on aging in place has been shared at local and national conferences with professional social workers and interdisciplinary gerontologists where she specifically details complex life experiences of disenfranchised people residing transiently in hotels and coping with chronic and acute health challenges. Dr. Lewinson was recently named by the Gerontological Society of America as a 2017-2018 Social Research, Policy, and Practice (SRPP) Fellow.