Roles:
- Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Southern Connecticut State University
- Former Postdoctoral Fellow, CIRA
Contact:
Biography:
Amy B. Smoyer is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Southern Connecticut State University. Her program of research examines the lived experience of incarceration and the impact of this experience on psycho-social and health outcomes. Specifically, her work focuses on women's lived experience of incarceration, women's health issues, food-related wellness, and HIV care and prevention.
Amy's current research explores the bladder habits of incarcerated women and the structural and interpersonal violence experienced by sexual minority women in prison. She is currently writing about stigma in the lives of incarcerated people living with HIV.
Amy has published 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent publication explores Danish women's use of hygge practices to construct safety while incarcerated. This data was gathered in 2014 when Amy spent two months in Denmark teaching and conducting research about Danish correctional systems as a Fulbright Scholar. Another one of Amy's recent publications describes the lives of older people in prison. These findings come from the SHARRPP study, a mixed-methods project about the impact of criminal justice systems on HIV risk. (PI: Kim M. Blankenship, NIDA 1R01-DA025021).
As a faculty member at SCSU, Amy oversees Southern’s undergraduate Social Work program as the BSW Coordinator. She also teaches Research Methods and Macro Social Work. Every fall semester, she teaches one section of the Research Methods course in Manson Youth Institution, a correctional facility for young men in Cheshire, CT, as part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
Amy has an ongoing partnership with the York Correctional Institution, Connecticut's only prison/jail facility for women, New Haven's Fresh Start Re-Entry Program, and Evergreen Family Services, a community-based program that supports men and women returning to New Haven from prison. She is also an active resident of New Haven's Fair Haven Heights neighborhood.
CIRA Affiliated Projects:
Selected Publications:
Smoyer, A. B. (2015). Making Fatty Girl cakes: Food and resistance in a women’s prison. The Prison Journal.
Smoyer, A.B. (2014). Feeding relationships: Food and social networks in a women’s prison. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 30 (1), 26-39. doi: 10.1177/0886109914537490
Smoyer, A.B. (2014). Good & Healthy: Foodways and construction of identity in a women’s prison. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 53 (5), 525-541. doi: 10.1111/hojo.12097
Smoyer, A.B. and Blankenship, K.M. (2014). Dealing Food: Female drug users’ narratives about food in a prison place and implications for their health. International Journal of Drug Policy, 25, 562-568. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.10.013
Smoyer, A.B., Rosenberg, A. & Blankenship, K.M. (2014). Setting the stage: Creating safe and productive data collection sites for social science research. Social Work Research, 38 (3), 178-183. doi: 10.1093/swr/svu019.
Smoyer, A.B., Blankenship, K.M., & Belt, B. (2009). Compensation for incarcerated research subjects: Diverse policies suggest research agenda. American Journal of Public Health, 99 (10), 1746-1752. doi: 10.1353/hpu.2005.0110
Blankenship, K.M., Smoyer, A.B., Bray, S.J., Mattocks, K. (2005). Black-White disparities in HIV/AIDS: The role of drug policy and the corrections system. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 16, 140–156. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2008.148726
Areas of Expertise:
- Prisons/Prison population
- Health Disparity
- Food and Nutrition
- Law/Policy
- Women/Gender
