Cecily Davis

Cecily D. Davis, BSW, MSW, PhD (Beloved) is a scholar, educator, and practitioner committed to dismantling anti-Black racism across educational and community settings. Grounded in critical theoretical frameworks, Beloved’s scholarship centers on Black children’s racial identity development, school racial climates, and the implementation of transformative anti-racist practices. Specifically, Davis’ research agenda advances two core priorities: identifying how Black parents effectively socialize their children to navigate racial discrimination and translating evidence-based models of optimal Black youth development into actionable community and institutional practices.

Davis brings almost 20 years of comprehensive social work practice/non-profit experience spanning micro, mezzo, and macro systems. Throughout Beloved’s career, Beloved has worked alongside historically marginalized communities, families, and youth to advance equity and systemic change. Davis’ practice background highlights a proven track record of cultivating sustainable, collaborative partnerships across non-profit organizations, for-profit entities, school systems, public agencies, and federally funded research initiatives. Through these cross-sector initiatives, Davis has refined extensive expertise in community engagement, strategic program development, grant administration, leadership, and community-partnered participatory research.

Methodologically, Davis employs rigorous mixed-methods designs to capture both broad systemic trends and the nuanced lived realities of participants. Beloved’s community-engaged research portfolio includes an efficacy evaluation of an early kindergarten mathematics readiness initiative and an empirical investigation into social-emotional competence among preschool educators and their students.

During Beloved’s doctoral studies, Davis served as co-investigator and lead facilitator for a pioneering pilot initiative designed to assist Black parents in fostering their children’s emotional well-being and developing adaptive coping mechanisms against racial stress. In addition to this project, Beloved directed a qualitative investigation into parental perceptions of institutional barriers impacting Black youth's educational attainment. Davis’ scholarship also includes co-authoring peer-reviewed work analyzing how research-to-practice partnerships can bridge academic inquiry and frontline community needs.

Davis’s scholarly agenda is inseparable from Beloved’s grounded frontline practice. From this vantage point, Beloved investigates how anti-racist social work pedagogy can directly confront and dismantle institutional racism embedded within social work systems. Beloved is dedicated to training emerging social workers to interrogate systemic oppression, implement anti-racist frameworks, and rigorously apply the discipline’s core theories, interventions, and ethical mandates to build racially equitable environments. Through this integration of empirical inquiry, community partnership, and social justice pedagogy, Davis equips future practitioners to lead sustainable institutional change across diverse practice settings.

Publications

Presentations