“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Alexis Jemal, LCSW, LCADC, JD, PhD, assistant professor at Silberman School of Social Work-Hunter College, is a scholar, artivist, educator, social entrepreneur and critical/radical social worker whose work facilitates the potential to transform consciousness into action. Dr. Jemal studies, practices, and educates on racial justice, healing and liberation. Recognizing the interplay of social injustice processes and outcomes, her work creates a rhythmic alteration between attacking the causes and healing the effects. By bridging the micro-macro divide, Dr. Jemal aims to dismantle white supremacy and oppressive practices, policies and culture. With an intersectional perspective that is trauma-informed and healing-centered, Dr. Jemal’s liberation-based practice pursues personal and collective healing from daily living in a dehumanizing society and aims to prevent and eliminate domination, exploitation and discrimination that pose barriers to life, wellness, liberty and justice. Dr. Jemal’s scholarship uses critical participatory action research (CPAR) methods to develop and test multi-level and multi-systemic socio-behavioral health practices that integrate the creative arts (e.g., applied theatre), sociodrama, critical theory, community and cultural organizing, restorative justice frameworks, radical healing and liberation health models to address structural, community and interpersonal violence. Dr. Jemal incorporates the Critical Transformative Potential Development (CTPD) framework that she developed for healing, equity, innovation, and reconciliation through personal, relational, and community transformation. In addition to serving as a framework for critical social work, CTPD provides a guide for anti-racism, reconciliation, and healing work that involves interrogating hierarchical power structures, rebuilding community, restoring authentic self-identities; reclaiming power; sparking radical imagination; and, inviting reparative action that disrupts the oppressive status quo. Dr. Jemal’s work spans epigenetics to cultural study, and draws from the disciplines of Public Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, Public Health, Criminal Justice, and Neuroscience. The interdisciplinary nature of Dr. Jemal’s research and practice creates an innovative synergy leading to holistic and dynamic discoveries for intervention. Her transformative potential-based efforts incorporate coalition building, the creative arts, and social enterprise to: 1) raise individual and collective critical consciousness about socio-health disparities and to foster critical action to address past harms; 2) disrupt and dismantle  ongoing, complex socio-cultural conditions, inequity, and structural and interpersonal violence that disproportionately impact the health and well-being of marginalized populations; and 3) develop and implement holistic socio-cultural, psychosocial, bio-behavioral health interventions and healing strategies to move toward a liberated future. Alexis enjoys bridging her worlds and integrating her many interests for her own radical healing and liberation. Some of these interests include creative writing, Afrofuturism, dancing with her 3-year-old, doing martial arts with her 9-year-old, adventurous road trips and international travel with her family.