Jen Self

Director, Q Center; Part-Time Lecturer, School of Social Work; Affiliate Faculty, GWSS
A portrait of Jen Self contemplating a billiard ball in a colorful office

Contact Information

HUB 315
Office Hours
By appointment

Biography

Dr. Jen Self earned their PhD in social welfare & graduate certificate in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington in 2010. Dr. Self is the founding (2004) Director of the UW Q Center, a nationally renowned intersectional queer justice center focused through the lenses of race, gender, and sexuality. They are a Part-time lecturer in School of Social Work & CHID and Affiliate Faculty of Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies. Jen, a licensed independent clinical social worker and social transformation/liberation educator, has worked in higher education or with educators through consultation for more than 20 years. They are a fierce and passionate teacher and scholar activist. Jen links teaching, practice, research, and service through commitment(s) to queered racial, economic and gender justice.

Dr. Self has worked in myriad educational and social work settings and imparts knowledge informed by more than two decades of practice emphasizing queer and trans communities, racial justice, and multi-racial coalition organizing/healing across issues and communities, identity and leadership development, program development and implementation, policy analysis/development, training and curriculum development, and accessible health/mental​ health care. ​Dr. Self's scholarship orbits around questions at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic justice, and cultural change. To truly forge a free and democratic society, (among other things) Dr. Self believes everyone must have unfettered access to education, teachers with whom they connect, structural supports and resources, and accessible, relate-able pathways to their visions of success.

When they aren't being so darn serious, they are a stand up comic, sometimes Iron person triathlete, cyclist, and parent to a wicked smart Ravenclaw daughter.

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