Student Spotlight: Jane McPherson, Ph.D. Program

Jane McPherson is a second-year doctoral student focusing on the intersection between human rights and social work practice, with a particular interest in the needs of women who have survived state violence.

With support from FSU’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights (CAHR), Jane spent the summer of 2010 working with African survivors of torture at the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC) in Washington, DC. This year, Jane has continued her work with TASSC by initiating a clinical placement at the agency and supervising one of FSU’s MSW students who is currently working there. With further support from CAHR, Jane will spend summer 2011 in Brazil, beginning to research the treatment resources available to torture survivors among refugee and native Brazilian populations.

Jane holds an MSW and MPH from Columbia University. She is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) with almost 20 years of experience in the field. Motherhood, trauma, and the special treatment needs of women have been her areas of clinical specialization. Jane’s work is both global and local in scope, extending from rural Florida to New York City, Egypt, and Brazil. She can work in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Since coming to Tallahassee in 2000 (and before returning to graduate school), she coordinated Healthy Start’s regional infant-mortality prevention program, provided perinatal bereavement training to outreach workers across the state of Florida, and implemented an infant mental-health program at Gadsden County Health Department. Jane lives in Tallahassee with her husband, the novelist Jon Jefferson (www.jeffersonbass.com), and two teenage children.