Nicole Corley
Email: ncorley@vcu.edu
Phone: (804) 827-1626
Pronouns: She/her
Nicole Corley, Ph.D., joined the faculty at the VCU School of Social Work as an assistant professor in August 2017 and earned promotion with tenure to associate professor in 2023. Her work is primarily focused on centering and honoring the taken-for-granted knowledges of Black mothers and Black students. Using qualitative research methods, her work explores resourcefulness, resistance and racial socialization to better understand the experiences of Black youth and their families. By amplifying their voices and perspectives, her scholarship endeavors to help disrupt the racialized, deficit-informed misorientations that focus adverse outcomes toward an acknowledgment of their assets, strengths and capabilities.
By challenging dominant assumptions that have misrepresented the experiences of Black students and mothers, Corley hopes her work and teaching has transformative impact. Within the field of social work, specifically, her goal is to contribute to the development of more culturally informed and culturally responsive interventions and practice methods that address systemic inequities impacting Black student achievement and Black family well-being, overall.
Corley also uses arts-based research methods in her work as a holistic approach to inquiry and as a system of tools to bring awareness to the conditions creating and perpetuating oppression, and as a strategy to promote social change.
Areas of expertise
- Adolescent and Youth Development
- Family
- Race and Ethnicity
- Social Work Practice
Education and credentials
Ph.D., University of Georgia
M.S.W., Georgia State University
B.S.W., Georgia State University
AA Georgia Perimeter College (now Georgia State)
Work
Selected publications
Corley, N.A., (2019). Exploring poetry as method: “Representing faithfully” the narratives of African American high school students and their mothers. Qualitative Social Work.
Corley, N. A., Reeves, P., & Odera, S. G. (2019). “That’s just who I am”: African American high school seniors and their mothers’ perspectives on academic success. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal.
Corley, N. A., & Young, S. M. (2018). Is social work still racist?: An updated content analysis. Social Work 63(4), 317–326.
Professional highlights
Research projects and funding
- Disrupting the Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline for Girls in Virginia: A Multilevel Intervention. Funded by the Department of Justice. ($425,000, Co-PIs Brubaker and Carlyle). Role: Co-I
- Ain't I a Mother?: Using Collage as Method to Explore Black Motherhood. Funded by QSR-IIQM Research Grant for Early Career Researchers ($25,000) Role: PI
Corley's current research project, Ain't I a Mother?: Using Collage as Method to Explore Black Motherhood, uses collage-making as a storytelling technique to generate new meanings and gain greater insights into the experiences of Black mothers by allowing them to participate in a discourse that has largely excluded their voice. More about the project can be found at aintiamother.wordpress.com.
Conference presentations
- Corley, N. A., (2020 September). “Ain't I a Mother?”: Using Collage as Method to Explore Black Motherhood. Virtual presentation as the QSR-IIQM Research Grant Winner at the first annual NVivo Conference.
- Brunson, A., Corley, N. A., Isom, S., & Machado-Escudero, Y., (2020 April) Academic M/Othering in the Ivory Tower. Workshop for the 8th annual Faculty Women of Color in the Academy National Conference. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
- Corley, N. A., Rasheem, S., & *Kirby, A. (2020 January) M/Othering while Black: A content analysis of Black mothers in social work journals. An oral presentation given at the Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference, Washington D.C.
Accomplishments
- 2019: Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research Early Career Reviewer Program
- 2018: Virginia Commonwealth University ASPiRE Faculty Fellow
Teaching areas and interests
- Social Policy
- Qualitative Research Methods