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Former RSF visiting scholar Maria Cancian (2001-2002) has been named dean of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, effective February 1, 2019. Cancian is currently Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs. She is an affiliate and former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at Wisconsin-Madison, where she has served on the faculty and in administrative leadership positions since 1993. In 2014, she was nominated to serve as assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She later served as senior advisor to the secretary of HHS and deputy assistant secretary for policy for ACF, in 2015 and 2016.

An influential scholar of public policies and their impact on children and families, Cancian’s research considers the relationship between public policies and changes in employment and family well-being. Her ongoing research explores the implications of family complexity for family well-being and public policy, as well as the interactions of the incarceration, child welfare and child support systems.

Cancian is co-editor of the RSF book, Changing Poverty, Changing Policies (2009), which analyzed the most promising strategies to reduce poverty in the twenty-first century economy, and she was a contributor to the RSF book, Working and Poor (2006), which examined how economic and policy changes over the previous twenty-five years affected the well-being of low-wage workers and their families.

Read the full press release from Georgetown University here.