Associate Professor
University of Georgia
Mary Ager is a social worker and Associate Professor of Social Work who examines poverty in the U.S. as a relationship between social policy and the market economy. Her scholarly work covers consumer borrowing among people who are low-income, the neoliberal shift in social policy, and community-based interventions that make borrowing less costly and risky.
As such, Dr. Ager has produced works in the areas of financial capabilities, social development, welfare state theory, and multidimensional poverty assessment. Methodologically, she has furthered the utilization of social media in qualitative social sciences research, and pioneered a method that uses the social media platform, Reddit, as a data source.
Dr. Ager teaches social policy, social work research, theory, generalist practice, history and philosophy of social work and social welfare, practice with individuals and community practice. She has created three new courses, two on poverty in the U.S. and one on financial capabilities. Her mission is to train future social workers and social work scholars to be critical thinkers by using participatory classroom strategies. Dr. Ager has been awarded teacher of the year numerous times in the undergraduate and doctoral social work programs at UGA, as well as by the UGA Student Government Council.
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