Dr. Joan Pennell is a Director of the Center for Family & Community Engagement and Professor of Social Work at North Carolina State University. Her center has received funding for work on child & family team meetings in child welfare (NC Division of Social Services) and schools (NC Department of Public Instruction). She previously directed the NC Family Group Conferencing Project, funded by the NC Division of Social Services.
Before her return to the United States, she was a principal investigator (with Gale Burford) for a Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, demonstration of family group conferencing in situations of child maltreatment and domestic violence. She was appointed to the National Crime Prevention Council (Canada), chaired its Youth Justice Committee, and promoted social development strategies for crime prevention. She helped to found the first shelter for abused women and their children in Newfoundland and co-facilitated support groups for abused women of European and Aboriginal descent.
In affiliation with the American Humane, she served as an external evaluator of Family Team Meetings for the District of Columbia Child & Family Services Agency and now is a member of an international team studying the evidence for family group decision making. She serves on the American Humane’s Advisory Councils on Family Group Decision Making and on Restorative Justice.
She co-authored Community Research as Empowerment: Feminist Links, Postmodern Interruptions (Oxford University Press), Family Group Conferencing: Evaluation Guidelines (American Humane Association), and Widening the Circle: The Practice and Evaluation of Family Group Conferencing with Children, Youths, and Their Families (NASW Press). She has presented on family-led meetings in Australia, Canada, England, Netherlands, New Zealand, and various U.S. states. Her editorial work includes the Review Board of Child Welfare and the editorial board of Contemporary Justice Review.
She received her AB from Earlham College in Indiana, her MSW from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and her PhD from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She taught previously at the University of Manitoba, School of Social Work, and Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work, where she also served as Interim Director and chaired its PhD Committee. At North Carolina State University, she served as the Department Head of Social Work.
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