Tobi Kindler and Jon Ahuna will serve two-year appointments with the School's Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work and Innovations Institute
The School of Social Work is housed on UConn's Hartford campus. (Olivia Drake/UConn)
This fall, the UConn School of Social Work welcomes two postdoctoral fellows and a new research assistant.
Tobias "Tobi" Kindler will join the UConn School of Social Work's Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work as a Postdoc.Mobility Fellow funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. He will serve in the role for two years.
Kindler's research interests include political social work, social policy, children's rights, and the well-being of young people in residential care. As part of his postdoctoral research, he plans to examine the experiences of social workers serving as elected officials in U.S. state legislatures, including how they use their positions to advance policies aligned with social work values and principles.
Kindler is the co-editor of two books and the co-author of numerous journal articles published nationally and internationally. His work appears in Child & Family Social Work, Children and Youth Services Review, European Journal of Social Work, and the Journal of Policy Practice and Research, among other publications.
Kindler, who is fluent in English, German, and French, comes to UConn from St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he works as a social worker and researcher. He recently earned a Ph.D. in social work from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation, titled "Social Workers in the Policy Process: A Case Study of Swiss Social Workers' Policy Engagement," explored social workers' policy engagement through an in-depth analysis of their involvement in a highly contested reform of social assistance in Switzerland.
He earned his BSW and MSW from the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. During his graduate studies, he worked as a research associate, contributing to a range of qualitative and quantitative research projects. He also taught courses on social policy, policy practice, and research methodologies.
Jon Ahuna joins the UConn School of Social Work's Innovations Institute as the Sheila A. Pires Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He will serve in the role for two years.
Ahuna's research interests include clinical decision-making and the critical examination of innovations in mental health service systems. His clinical interests center on interventions for youth who have experienced complex trauma.
Ahuna is the co-author of studies published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, Psychotherapy Research, Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, and Children and Youth Services Review.
Ahuna comes to UConn from the University of South Carolina, where he recently earned a Ph.D. and an MA in clinical-community psychology. His dissertation was titled "Opening the 'Black Box' on Decision Processes in Mental Health Supervision: Tactics, Strategies, and Influences."
Ahuna completed his predoctoral internship at the National Center for School Mental Health through the University of Maryland. There, he developed a design-centered interview protocol to inform the implementation of a digital therapeutic app in a mobile substance use clinic.
Ahuna earned a BA in psychology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he studied community mental health systems and cultural psychology.
