Kaliyah Gardner

Kaliyah Gardner, MSW, MEd is a PhD Social Work student at Rutgers University; a graduate assistant at the Center for Research on Ending Violence (REV); and Director of Research & Care at New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance (NJRUA). She uses community-engaged, qualitative, arts-based, and embodied methods such as CBPR, PAR, and cuerpo-territorio to investigate how people are governed as sexual citizens, and how these governing forces shape their relationship with the self, their sense of belonging, and their interactions at different systems levels. Kaliyah focuses particularly on how sex workers navigate and resist social exclusion under stigma and criminalization, with an emphasis on identifying and enhancing protective factors to create more robust ecosystems of care for sex workers. Her work also engages broader issues related to reproductive health and justice.