Scholarship
My current research and scholarship focuses primarily on ethical emotions, especially anxiety, in clinical relationships as well as youth and adult development. I am currently writing about moral strain, dissociation, and reflexivity in the formation of identity in relational psychotherapy. I am interested in how emotions can function not only as reactions but as ethical signals. I have also studied clinical ethics in settings of precarity, violence, conflict, and despair, and how adolescents and adults respond to witnessing bullying and aggression and sometimes try to help targeted peers despite nervousness.
You can learn more about my research and scholarship here.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Fareed, A., Byers, D. S., & Hreish, L. (2025). Too close for comfort: Intergenerational blame and disillusionment in social work supervision in the West Bank, Palestine. Social Science & Medicine. [Advance online publication].
Vartanian, T., Byers, D. S., Shapiro, J., & Solo, C. (2024). The effects of relative income deprivation and low income on adult mental health. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. [Advance online publication].
Kumaria, S., Byers, D. S., McCarthy, K., & Moedano, C. (2023). Social identity as a factor in bystander responses to bias-based verbal aggression among college students. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 32(10), 1393–1411.
Byers, D. S., Fareed, A., & Hreish, K. (2022). The vernacular ethics of stigmatized care: Reinterpreting acceptance and confidentiality for social work in the West Bank, Palestine. Social Service Review, 96(1), 73–109.
Byers, D. S., & Cerulli, M. (2021). Staying in their own lane: Ethical reasoning among college students witnessing cyberbullying. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(4), 508–518.
Byers, D. S., Mishna, F., & Solo, C. (2021). Clinical practice with children and adolescents involved with bullying and cyberbullying: Gleaning guidelines from the literature. Clinical Social Work Journal. 49(1), 20–34.
Byers, D. S., McInroy, L. B., Craig, S. L., Slates, S., & Kattari, S. K. (2020). Naming and addressing homophobic and transphobic microaggressions in social work classrooms. Journal of Social Work Education, 56(3), 484–495.
Byers, D. S., Vider, S., & Smith, E. (2019). Clinical activism in community-based practice: The case of LGBT affirmative care at the Eromin Center, Philadelphia, 1973-1984. American Psychologist, 74(8), 868–881.
Byers, D. S., & Shapiro, J. R. (2019). Renewing the ethics of care for social work under the Trump administration. Social Work, 64(2), 175–180.
Byers, D. S., Coburn, J., Hurvitz-Prinz, A., & Hustead, P. (2017). Learning together: A dialogue on collaborative MSW thesis advising. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 87(4), 345–349.
Byers, D. S. (2016). Recognition of social pain among peers: Rethinking the role of bystanders in bullying and cyberbullying. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 86(4), 335–354.
Kokaliari, E., Berzoff, J., Byers, D. S., Fareed, A., Berzoff-Cohen, J., & Hreish, K. (2016). Teaching clinical social work under occupation: Listening to the voices of Palestinian social work students. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 36(2), 140– 159.
Byers, D. S. (2013). “Do they see nothing wrong with this?”: Bullying, bystander complicity, and the role of homophobic bias in the Tyler Clementi case. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 94(4), 251–258.
Book Chapters
Byers, D. S., & Fareed, A. (2024). Should life in refugee camps feel ‘normal?’: The ethical stakes of social work among displaced Palestinians. In L. V. McLaughlin & C. Robbins (Eds.), Tania El Khoury’s live art: Collaborative knowledge production. Amherst College Press.
Hertz, P., Flanagan, L. M., Byers, D. S., & Berzoff, J. (2021). The bridge: From theory to practice. In J. Berzoff, L. M. Flanagan, & P. Hertz (Eds.), Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic clinical theory and psychopathology in contemporary multicultural contexts (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Byers, D. S., Thigpen, K. Z., & Wolfson, S. (2019). Working with LGBTQIA+ clients in the context of trauma, with a focus on transgender experience. In S. Ringel & J. Brandell (Eds.), Trauma: Contemporary directions in theory, practice, and research (2nd ed.). Columbia University Press.
Byers, D. S. (2016). DSM-5 and the role of descriptive diagnosis. In J. Berzoff, L. M. Flanagan, & P. Hertz (Eds.), Inside out and outside in: Psychodynamic clinical theory and psychopathology in contemporary multicultural contexts (4th ed., pp. 318–329). Rowman & Littlefield.