Hannah Norwood

Hannah Obertino Norwood joined Dominican University as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Work in August 2024. Before joining Dominican, Hannah received her PhD in Social Work and Social Welfare from the University of Chicago. Drawing on the intersections of social work and anthropology, she studies policy implementation, immigrant rights and organizing, and community-based professionals. Her recent research has focused on US census counting, undercounting, and political exclusion, centering the labor and dilemmas of policy leaders, service providers, and community organizers trying to ensure all Chicago residents would be counted. As a teacher, Hannah encourages social work students to see themselves as political actors and to engage their work settings and the questions and experiences that they bring into the classroom with an ethnographic eye. She supports students to critically reimagine and transform the policies big and small that pervade sites of social work practice.