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2026 Disability Manuscript Award
The CSWE Council on Disability and Persons With Disabilities (CDPD) is pleased to announce the 2026 Disability Manuscript Award recipient. The award recognizes scholarship that contributes to knowledge about disability; full participation of persons with disabilities; social, political, and economic issues related to disability and persons with disabilities; and social work education curriculum materials focused on disability and persons with disabilities.
Alison B. Wetmur, DSW, LCSW
Alison B. Wetmur, DSW, LCSW, is a DeafDisabled scholar-practitioner, clinician, and disability justice advocate whose work sits at the intersection of social work education, critical disability studies, and d/Deaf studies. She serves as Visiting Lecturer at the University of Kentucky College of Social Work, where she teaches doctoral and MSW-level courses in program evaluation, psychopathology, and social welfare policy.
Ali is Inaugural Chair of the NASW National Committee on Disabilities (2026–2028), Team Lead for the Disability Justice cross-cutting group of the Social Work Grand Challenges Futures Initiative, and Co-Founder of the Social Work Disability Justice League. She previously taught at Gallaudet University and Manchester Community College, and holds her DSW from Rutgers University. In clinical practice, she maintains a bilingual English/ASL practice at True Places Counseling PLLC in New London, Connecticut, specializing in trauma with d/Deaf and disabled clients.
2026 Disability Manuscript Award - Honorable Mention
Subin Na, MA, LSW
Subin Nais a third-year doctoral student in Social Welfare at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice. Her research examines how mental health systems can be reshaped to better serve people in recovery, with particular attention to the peer support workforce, mental health equity for Asian and immigrant communities, and the design of crisis care. Drawing on her earlier training as a mental health social worker in Korea, her doctoral work integrates attention to cultural context, lived experience, and computational methods.
Methodologically, Subin works with quantitative and computational tools, including machine learning, natural language processing, structural equation modeling, and multilevel modeling. Her dissertation uses text-as-data methods to examine how the peer support workforce is being shaped through professionalization, attending to the tensions that arise as lived experience is translated into formal occupational structures. She holds an MA in Social Welfare from Seoul National University and is a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) in Pennsylvania.