Adjunct Spotlight: Khudodod Khudododov, MSW, Ph.D. | Adjunct Instructor

Khudodod Khudododov practices and researches social work at an international scale, with experience in community and economic development around the world – yet, this adjunct professor’s core interest in social work research praxis was incubated right here at the Silberman School of Social Work.

Mr. Khudododov joined the Silberman faculty in 2011, after earning his MSW from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He has taught extensively within the Social Work Research sequence, a core aspect of the School’s curriculum. It was through teaching research at Silberman that Mr. Khudododov became aware of opportunities to expand the social work research tradition itself. Recognizing that his students brought remarkably diverse approaches and capabilities to research – and, at the same time, that research is often under-emphasized in social work pedagogy – he began to ask how social work research methods and their vital evidence base could be strengthened through new, collaborative, inter-disciplinary models. To that end, he has worked to bring perspectives from computer science and machine learning, social media analysis, and other fields into social work research.

“Research can be challenging and alienating for students,” explains Mr. Khudododov, so his work is ultimately guided by “the question of what research brings to practice. What is practice-based research, and what is research-based practice?” Exploring that with Silberman students is perpetually rewarding for Mr. Khudododov, who enjoys bringing his international, multi-disciplinary perspectives to the classroom while meeting each cohort of students at the interests, experiences, and abilities they bring. He views the School community as a “mutually supportive” environment where “I want to help students, and students want to help me [teach them]. It is a grounded and resilient community.”