
Robert O. Motley Jr. is an affiliated scholar in the Justice Police Center at the Urban Institute and an assistant professor at Boston College School of Social Work, where he is the founder and principal investigator of the Racism-based Violence Injury and Prevention Lab. Motley has extensive research expertise at the intersection of racism, police violence, and trauma among marginalized emerging adult populations and associated mental and behavioral health outcomes. He has received research funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Evidence for Action program. Motley’s research has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, and he has presented his findings at national and international conferences. He received a master of social work degree from the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois Chicago and his doctoral degree from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.