Joshua Miller

Joshua Miller's areas of interest are anti-racism work, the social ecology of disaster and integrating psychosocial capacity building and disaster mental health approaches in response to disasters. He has been a professor at Smith College, School for Social Work, for 20 years.

His most recent book, Psychosocial capacity building in response to disasters, offers a model for working with individuals, families and communities after a disaster that is holistic, multisystemic, ecological, empowering and sustainable.

He co-authored Racism in the United States: Implications for the Helping Professions with Ann Marie Garran, which considers all of levels of racism from a range of perspectives and offers suggestions about how to confront racism for human service professionals. He also co-edited School Violence and Children in Crisis. He has published numerous articles and regularly presents at conferences and conducts workshops at community organizations about confronting racism and responding to tragedies and disasters. He has responded to many domestic disasters, such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Aurora, Colorado shooting, as well as disasters in Sri Lanka, Northern Uganda, Sichuan Province China, and Haiti. He volunteers for local and national teams and organizations that offer disaster mental health and crisis intervention responses after tragedies and disasters. He currently works with a project in Northern Uganda to offer medical and psychosocial capacity building. In 2008 Joshua Miller was appointed as an Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University.

Prior to teaching Dr. Miller worked for 20 years as a community organizer, family therapist, group worker, researcher and as the director of public and private nonprofit child and family welfare agencies.

Education

Ph.D., University of Connecticut, School of Family Studies

M.S.W., University of Washington

B.A. (sociology and psychology), Clark University

Selected articles and chapters

Miller, J., Grabelsky, J. & Wagner, K.C. (2011). Psychological capacity building in New York: Building resiliency with construction workers assigned to Ground Zero after 9/11. Social Work with Groups.

Park, Y., Miller, J. & Chau, B. (2010). "Everything has changed": Narratives of the Vietnamese-American community in Biloxi, Mississippi. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, XXXVII(3), 79-105.

Werkmeister Rozas, L. & Miller, J. (2009). Discourses for Social Justice Education: The Web of Racism and the Web of Resistance. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity, 18(1), 24-39.

Corbin, J. & Miller, J. (2009). Collaborative psychosocial capacity building in Northern Uganda. Families in Society, 90(1), 103-109.

Miller, J. & Garran, A,M. (2009). The Legacy of Racism for Social Work Practice Today and What to do About it. In A. Roberts (Ed.) The Social Work Desk Reference (pp. 928-933). NY: Oxford.

Miller, J. & Donner, S. (2007). The complexity of multidimensional social identity development. In S. Borrmann, M. Klassen, & C. Spatscheck (eds.). International social work: Social problems, cultural issues and social work education (pp. 75-94). Opladen, Germany: Barbara Budrich Publishers.

Park, Y. & Miller, J. (2007). Inequitable distributions. Journal of Intergroup Relations Vol. XXXIII(1), 45-49.

Miller, J., & Garran, A. (2007). The web of instiutional racism. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 77(1), 33-67.

Park, Y. & Miller, J. (2006). The social ecology of Hurrican Katrina: Rewriting the discourse of "natural" disasters. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 76(3), 9-24.

Miller, J. (2006). Waves amidst war: Intercultural challenges while training volunteers to respond to the psychosocial needs of Sri Lankan Tsunami Survivors. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 6(4).

Miller, J. (2005). Critical incident debriefings and community-based clinical care. In A. Lightburn & P. Sessions (Eds.), Community-based clinical practice (pp. 529-541). New York: Oxford University Press.

Donner, S., & Miller, J. (2005). The road to becoming an anti-racism institution. In A. Lightburn & P. Sessions (Eds.), Community-based clinical practice (pp. 122-134). New York: Oxford University Press.

Miller, J., Hyde, C., & Ruth, B.J., (2004). Teaching about race and racism in social work: The challenge for white educators. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 74(2), 409-426.

Miller, J., Donner, S., Fraser, E., (2004). Talking when talking is tough: Taking on conversations about race, sexual orientation, gender and class. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 74(2), 377-392.

Miller, J. (2003). Critical stress debriefing and social work: Expanding the frame. Journal of Social Service Research, 30(2), 7-25.