Tam Perry, PhD, MA, MSSW

Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University

Tam Perry is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University. She recently received her PhD in Social Work and Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her ethnographic research addresses housing transitions of older adults from a network perspective. As health, mobility and kin and peer networks alter, she explores how older adults contemplate their homes and its contents. She studies housing transitions because, while aging in place is often preferred and cost-effective, inevitably some older adults will undertake the emotional and physical labor, as well as the negotiation of medical, financial and long-term care infrastructures, involved in relocation. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the John A. Hartford Foundation, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. She plans to begin a new research project in Detroit on relocation in older adulthood funded by the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research as well as conduct a longitudinal study of older adults who participated in her dissertation project funded by a University Research Grant from Wayne State University.

FACULTY PROFILE

Keywords: 
qualitative methods, theories of aging, history of social welfare policy for older Americans, macro social work, mixed methods, social work in diverse populations, international social work, built environment, gerontological social work, long-term care is
First Name: 
Tam
Last Name: 
Perry