Brianna Harvey,
Ph.D., MSW
About Dr. Harvey
Dr. Brianna Harvey is an Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. A first generation college student raised in Southern California, her commitment to advancing the wellbeing of youth, families, and communities is rooted in her prior work as a community based social worker in Los Angeles and her leadership in higher education as the former Associate Director of the UCLA Bruin Resource Center and Director of the Bruin Guardian Scholars Program.
In these roles she worked closely with youth and families as they navigated social institutions including child welfare, education, and the criminal legal system, witnessing firsthand how structural and systemic disenfranchisement is produced and maintained at the individual, familial, and community level.
Dr. Harvey received her Bachelors of Sociology from the University of La Verne, her Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California, and her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.
As a critical qualitative methodologist, Dr. Harvey examines how complex systemic inequities emerge when child welfare, schools and carceral systems collusively partner to shape the lives of Black youth and their families, with particular attention to how these structures disrupt wellbeing and delimit Black life. Her work traces the enduring legacy of American chattel slavery to contemporary social institutions, revealing how racialized logics of control and punishment continue to manifest through modern policies, practices, and ideologies. Concurrently, her scholarship elucidates the ways youth and families actively resist, subvert, and reimagine life outside of the subjugation they face within these institutions.
Grants
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Harvey, B. (PI) & Whitman, K. (Co-PI). A Socio-ecological Examination of the Educational and Life Trajectories of Young Men of Color with Foster Care Experience. University of California, Berkeley Transition Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub, Subaward from Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
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Harvey, B. (PI). Challenging Anti-Blackness in Education: Amplifying the Voices of Black Foster Youth Students through Counter-Storytelling. University of California, Berkeley Transition Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub, Subaward from Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
Fellowships
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Scholarship for the Study of Black Lives at the UCLA SEIS
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Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
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Carolyn D. Smith Fellowship
Funded Projects
Research
Publications & Media
Harvey, B., & Wali, J. (2025) It’s Never Been about the Welfare of Children: The Origins of the Term Family
Police. How to End the Family Policing System: From Outrage to Action. Haymarket Books
Harvey, B., & Howard, T. (2025). The genius is not hidden — they just weren’t looking: Refusing erasure
in the lives of Black foster youth. The Educational Forum, 89(4), 496-513. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2025.2539043
Whitman, K. L., Ruderman, M. A., Harvey, B., Tully, B., Berman, A., & Langley, A. K. (2025). A mixed-
methods study of students of color with foster care experience navigating a syndemic. Innovative
Higher Education, advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-025-09829-6
Harvey, B., Cabral, B., Annamma, S. A., & Morgan, J. (2024). “Ain’t nobody about to trap me”: The
violence of multi-system collusion and entrapment for incarcerated disabled girls of color. Journal
of School Violence, 23(2), 202–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2023.2297035
Annamma, S. A., Cabral, C., B., Harvey, Wilmot, J. M., Le, A., & Morgan, J. (2024). “When we come to
your class… we feel not like we’re in prison”: Resisting prison-school’s dehumanizing and
(de)socializing mechanisms through abolitionist praxis. American Educational Research Journal,
61(1), 3-47. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312231198236
Cabral, B., Annamma, S. A., Le, A., Harvey, B., Wilmot, J. M., & Morgan, J. (2022). Solidarity incarcerated:
Building authentic relationships with girls of color in youth prisons. Teachers College Record,
124(7), 174-200. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681221111458
Harvey, B., Gupta-Kagan, J., & Church, C. (2021). Reimagining schools’ role outside the family regulation
system. Columbia Journal of Race and Law, 11(3), 575-610.
Podcasts & Interviews
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Pickens, J., & Oliver, J. (2023) Help is not on the way. The upend Podcast [audio podcast].
Contact
To request a booking (e.g., keynotes, workshops, professional development sessions, consultations, or evaluations), please submit your inquiry below.