Ramona Beltrán, PhD, MSW (Chicana, Indigenous Mexican descent)

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver

Ramona Beltrán’s Ramona Beltran, (Chicana, Indigenous Mexican descent) scholarship focuses on the intersections of historical trauma, embodiment, and environmental/social determinants of health as they affect health and risk behaviors in indigenous communities.

She is particularly interested in centering cultural protective factors, strengths and resiliencies in indigenous populations as they work to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of historical trauma. She uses decolonizing methodologies with an emphasis on qualitative methods that incorporate innovative geospatial, photographic technologies, and digital storytelling to support community-based research.

Beltrán believes narrative is both a powerful clinical practice and research method that helps individuals, families and communities articulate the conditions of their own existence, as well as solutions to their most pressing issues.

Drawing from more than 15 years of experience using arts, dance and movement, digital media, and narrative with Latino and indigenous communities, Beltrán is passionate about teaching and believes that social work classrooms can be uniquely transformative spaces in which students learn to bridge theory and practice through embodied and experiential learning. Whether in the classroom, in community-based research or through community activism, Beltrán believes that social work practice and scholarship have the capacity to mobilize in co-authoring new stories of healing and equity as we strive toward a
socially just society.

Ramona Beltrán, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Social Work
University of Denver
Email: ramona.beltran@du.edu

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