Stacey L. Barrenger, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and earned an A.M. (MSW equivalent) from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Barrenger is a mental health services researcher whose research focuses on the intersection of mental illness and other social problems (criminal justice involvement, substance use, homelessness, social exclusion, and poverty). She is also interested in implementation research that considers the community or structural factors that can impact the effectiveness of empirically supported treatments in high-risk environments. She received an individual NRSA pre-doctoral training grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health in support of this work.

A current research project explores pathways of recovery and desistance from crime for individuals with mental health and criminal justice experiences and seeks to understand the work experiences of mental health peer specialists with criminal justice histories. Another project examines the prison health care experiences of those with mental illnesses who were formerly incarcerated. She is also a collaborator on a critical participatory action research project with returning citizens at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Previously, Dr. Barrenger worked in community mental health in Chicago where she supervised two Assertive Community Treatment Teams, developed a program to transition individuals from the state psychiatric hospital to the community, and worked on initiatives to increase communication between Cook County Jail and local mental health providers. These experiences in public mental health inform her current research agenda.