Sheila M. McMahon, PHD

Community-level interventions to prevent sexualized violence and increase sense of community; the role of trauma-responsive restorative practices and restorative justice to address sexual misconduct on college campuses; social work education, student empowerment and social action entrepreneurship in social work education.

Sheila M. McMahon, PhD, M.Div., MSW, LCSW is an Assistant Professor at the Barry University School of Social Work in Miami Shores, FL. Her research focuses on the prevention of sexual violence, and building pro-social communities through the use of restorative practices. Currently, she is engaged in a variety of research projects that focus on restorative and transformative justice responses to campus-based sexual violence, the needs of at-risk youth, and among Catholic colleges. She is a trainer and researcher with a national restorative justice project based at the University of San Diego. At Barry, she is the co-convener of the BE Lab Social Enterprise Action Cohort (SEAC), an incubator for student-initiated social work organizations, and participates in the research initiatives of the Center for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ) at the Barry University School of Social Work. She holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University. She earned her MSW and PhD at the Rutgers University School of Social Work. Dr. McMahon is also a licensed clinical social worker in Florida.