Julia Henly

Julia R. Henly is a professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago, where she chairs the Ph.D. program and co-directs the Employment Instability, Family Well-being, and Social Policy Network.

Henly’s scholarship aims to advance understanding of the economic and caregiving strategies of low-income families to inform the design and improve the effectiveness of work-family policies and public benefits, especially child care policy. Her ongoing projects investigate equity in program access and use of child care subsidy programs; the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on child care programs and the care arrangements of low-income families; parental child care decision-making in predominantly Latinx communities; and the prevalence and consequences of precarious work schedules on work-family outcomes.

Henly is a 2018 Society for Social Work and Research fellow, a 2016 Interdisciplinary Research Leadership fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a 2016 distinguished fellow of the William T. Grant Foundation.

Henly received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Her scholarship has received funding from federal agencies and private foundations, and is published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited book volumes.