Neil Bilotta is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at UNC-Chapel Hill. His personal, activist, and academic interests are rooted in anti-racist and anti-colonial social work ethical practices and research with refugees and other forcibly displaced communities. Bilotta is interested in the ways racism, colonialism, and Eurocentric power inform research methodologies and social work interventions with those experiencing refugee status. In collaboration with such communities, he aims to explore how social work can move beyond neoliberal and Eurocentric ideologies in work with forcibly displaced folks. He has worked with forcibly displaced young people in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Canada. Furthermore, his work also explores how race and racism underpin most mainstream theoretical and methodological prisms related to social work.
Contact
Degrees and Licenses
Ph.D., McGill University School of Social WorkMSW, Smith College School for Social Work
MHS, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
Primary Program
Global Engagement Office, Global Social Development Innovations CenterResearch and Professional Interests
Anti-racismDecolonizing Research Methodologies
Refugee young people
Social Inclusion
Relational Ethics
Recent Publications
Bilotta, N. (2023). Reimagining’ respect for persons’ and ‘justice’: Culturally
irresponsive ethical principles with refugees. International Social Work, 6(3), 817-830.
Bilotta, N. (2023). Are ‘ethically appropriate’ responses the same?: A social
work practitioner/researcher’s dilemma. In S. Plaut, N. Bilotta, L. Rosenoff, C. Clark-Kazak, &M. Felices-Luna (eds.) Messy ethics in human rights work. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Bilotta, N., Fenning, M., Denov, M., Bah, A., & Marchand, I. (2021). Assessing participatory research with children affected by armed conflict: Conceptual, methodological and ethical concerns. In Denov, M., Mitchell, C., & Rabiau, M. (eds.). Children and families affected by war, displacement and migration: A tri-pillared approach. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Bilotta, N. (2022). Confronting social work worldviews: Ubuntu and procedural
research ethics with persons experiencing refugee status. International Journal for Social Work Values and Ethics, 19(2).
Bilotta, N. (2021). A critical self-reflexive account of a privileged researcher in
a complicated setting: Kakuma refugee camp. Research Ethics, 17(4),
435-447.
