Richard Gelles, PhD

Richard J. Gelles, PhD, Former Dean (2001-2014) and Joanne T. & Raymond H. Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice; Managing-Faculty Director, Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice, and Research; Founding Director, Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence. He is the author of many books include The Book of David (1996) which helped raise awareness of the tragic and unintended consequences of then-prevailing family-first model of child welfare. Publication of that book, and Gelles’s subsequent testimony before Congress, helped lead to the passage of The Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) of 1997.