Christopher Salas-Wright
Barry Family Professor in Social Work
Biography
Christopher Salas-Wright, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.A., is the inaugural Barry Family Professor in Social Work and Assistant Dean for Doctoral Education at the Boston College School of Social Work. He received his Ph.D. from Boston College in 2012 before completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. He then held faculty positions at The University of Texas at Austin (2013-2016) and Boston University (2016-2020) before returning to Boston College as faculty in 2020. Professor Salas-Wright’s research primarily examines the experiences of stress and resilience among displaced populations and how these experiences influence mental health. He has been instrumental in developing the crisis-informed theory of cultural stress, which explores how individuals and families experience stress due to cultural changes and challenges when migrating across national borders. Building upon this framework, he led the development of the crisis migration experiences scale, designed to measure exposure to key stressors such as material hardship, physical danger, and psychological desperation. Salas-Wright is leading two five-year studies funded by the National Institutes of Health. The first, the Adelante Boricua study, focuses on Puerto Ricans displaced to the United States mainland after Hurricane Maria in 2017. As the only longitudinal study of displaced Maria survivors, Adelante Boricua provides unique insights into the complex interplay between severe weather events, displacement, and mental health. The second, the Venezolanos en Nuevos Entornos (VENE) study, charts the experiences of nearly 2,000 Venezuelan children and adults resettling in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, and the U.S. state of Florida. VENE is the only longitudinal, cross-national study of Venezuelans in diaspora, providing timely evidence on one of modern history’s most significant population movements. Salas-Wright’s research has resulted in over 250 publications, including first-author articles in journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and Current Opinion in Psychology . His scientific contributions have significantly advanced the field, earning him recognition with the Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work in Research and the National Award of Excellence in Research by a Senior Investigator from the National Hispanic Science Network. Additionally, he has been inducted as a Fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research and the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. Salas-Wright served as a standing member of NIH’s Social Psychology, Personality, and Interpersonal Processes Study Section, which reviews the scientific merit of grant applications submitted to NIH. Currently, he serves on the editorial boards of the Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Social Work and the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences. In 2024, Dr. Salas-Wright represented Boston College in the Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Leaders Network, a program designed to enhance leadership skills and foster collaboration among leaders from ACC universities. Additionally, he was selected as a 2025 participant in the Ignatian Leadership Development Program, a university-wide initiative designed to cultivate leadership skills rooted in Ignatian values. Professor Salas-Wright works with students at all levels in his research. He has served as a mentor for multiple NIH-funded predoctoral training fellowships and dissertation awards, as well as the inaugural UNICEF-USA Boston College Postdoctoral Fellowship. His recent doctoral and postdoctoral trainees have secured tenure-track faculty positions at various Carnegie R1 universities, including Rutgers, Tulane University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of South Florida.