Suzanne Pritzker, PhD, MSW is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. Dr. Pritzker is a nationally-recognized scholar of civic engagement, political social work, and macro-level change. Her scholarship focuses on understanding communities’ experiences of civic engagement, examining structures that facilitate and impede civic engagement and identifying community-driven civic engagement strategies. Utilizing participatory methods, Dr. Pritzker works to amplify community voices, support community access to findings, and facilitate meaningful public impact through community-guided dissemination activities. Dr. Pritzker also brings this community-grounded lens to examining inequitable voting structures. Through her co-authored comprehensive analyses of policies affecting civic engagement in Greater Houston, community partners have been able to use findings to advocate for – and achieve – local policy changes to increase equitable access to political processes, e.g., offering multi-lingual voter registrar trainings, creating polling locations on college campuses, and adopting a new voting system through which voters could cast a ballot at any county location, not only at their assigned precinct.  

Dr. Pritzker also studies how social workers are prepared for, and engage in, influencing policy. As “Coalition Scholar,” awarded by the Council on Social Work Education’s Coalition for Policy Education and Practice in Social Work, she led the first comprehensive study of the state of policy education in social work across the U.S.; an article stemming from this study was recognized as “Best Quantitative Article” by the Journal of Social Work Education (2024). She is co-author of the first-ever political social work book, Political Social Work: Using Power to Create Social Change, publicly recognized for its substantial contributions to establishing this scholarly field.  

Throughout her academic career, Dr. Pritzker has actively sought to strengthen social work voice in shaping policy and developing social work policy leaders. She has served on multiple national social work boards focused on policy practice and has designed and led faculty development sessions across the U.S. focused on teaching policy in social work. Most recently, Dr. Pritzker served as the policy practice lead for the national “Specialized Practice Curricular Guide for Macro Social Work Practice,” strengthening access to high quality policy teaching resources for social work programs across the country. 

Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh in 2025, Dr. Pritzker served as the Kantambu Latting Endowed Professor for Leadership and Change and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. There, she led macro curriculum development, taught courses on policy and political change, created innovative political social work educational initiatives, and directed an immersive social work legislative internship program. The impact of Dr. Pritzker’s scholarship, teaching, and mentorship has been recognized through local awards from the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and the Houston Area League of Women Voters, as well as national recognitions including as one of “10 Dedicated and Deserving Social Workers” by Social Work Today (2013) and as “Outstanding Individual in Academia” (2018) and “Social Justice Champion” (2022) by the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy.   

Representative Publications 

Book  

Lane, S. & Pritzker, S. (2018). Political Social Work: Using Power to Create Social Change. New York, NY: Springer.   

Journal Articles 

Pritzker, S. (2024). Close to home: A call for increased local efforts to advance voter access. Journal of Policy Practice and Research.  

Pritzker, S., Moreno, D., Nicotera, N., Saenz, R., Clancy, H., Avila, K., Ruiz, A., & Campos, S. (2024). Promoting good trouble: Latinx youth-driven change strategies for civic engagement and activism. Children and Youth Services Review, 164.  

Pritzker, S., Richards-Schuster, K., & Hartley, J.M. (2024). Developing a youth-centered ethics training for youth participatory action research: Navigating the academic Institutional Review Board. Social Work Research, 48, 3, 213-219.  

Narendorf, S., Ali, S., Lea, C. & Pritzker, S. (2023). Striving toward community engaged and participatory methods: Considerations for researchers in academic settings. Research on Social Work Practice, 47, 1, 62-74.  

Pritzker, S. & Giraldo-Santiago, N. (2023). Policy education in U.S. social work programs: Results of a national study. Journal of Social Work Education, 59, 2, 477-492.  

Shepherd, D. & Pritzker, S. (2021). Political advocacy without a choice: Highlighting African-American political social workers. Advances in Social Work, 21, 2.  

Pritzker, S. & Lozano, A. (2021). Political justice: A social work imperative. Social Work, 66(1), 70-72.  

Minter, T. & Pritzker, S. (2017). Measuring adolescent social and academic self-efficacy: Cross-ethnic validity of the SEQ-C. Research on Social Work Practice, 27, 7, 818-826.  

Pritzker, S. & Richards-Schuster, K. (2016). Promoting young people’s participation: Exploring social work’s contributions to the literature. Social Work, 61, 3, 217-226.  

Richards-Schuster, K. & Pritzker, S. (2015). Strengthening youth participation in civic engagement: Applying the Convention on the Rights of the Child to social work practice. Children and Youth Services Review, 57, 90-97.  

Public-Facing Reports, Op-Eds, Podcasts 

Marschall, M. & Pritzker, S. (2023, Dec.) Battlegrounds for access: Civic engagement in the Greater Houston region. Report to Houston Endowment. 

Pritzker, S., Durrani, AJ, & Hafizi, N. (2023, Sept. 25). The danger of a single election day narrative. Democracy Docket. https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/the-danger-of-a-single-election…   

The Action Research Podcast. (2023, April 5). Amplifying AAPI youth voices in civic engagement. [Audio podcast] https://actionresearch.podbean.com/e/amplifying-aapi%c2%a0youth%c2%a0voices-in-civic-engagement    

Duden, T. (2020, Oct. 29). Let’s talk politics – Navigating these next few weeks with Dr. Suzanne Pritzker [Audio podcast]. https://t.co/xiNvGoyl2n?amp=1  

Meehan, P. (2018, July 26). Political social work with Shannon Lane & Suzanne Pritzker [Audio podcast]. https://socialworkpolitics.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/political-social-work-with-shannon-lane-suzanne-pritzker/