Stories of Somali Motherhood: Uncovering the Impacts of US Child Protection Service Intervention on Somali Mothers' Self-Understandings

Join us on June 10 at 2pm on Zoom.

Johara Suleiman, PhD will present her research, Stories of Somali Motherhood: Uncovering the Impacts of U.S. Child Protection Service Intervention on Somali Mothers’ Self-Understandings. The project is an oral history-informed qualitative study examining first-generation Somali immigrant mothers’ interactions with the U.S. child welfare system and the impacts of those interventions on their understandings of themselves and the child welfare system as a whole. This presentation focuses on the history of mandatory reporting law from the early 1960s to today and explores the contemporary consequences of those laws for the Somali mothers represented in this study.

Johara Suleiman completed her PhD in Social Work in 2026. She is the recipient of the IHRC 2025-2026 Graduate Fellowship in Finnish American Studies.

This event is co-sponsored by the Immigration History Research Center Archives of the University of Minnesota Libraries.