Rebecca Bosetti, MSW, PhD

Rebecca L. Bosetti, PhD, MSW is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Kentucky. Bosetti completed her PhD in Social Work at The Ohio State University in 2020 after defending her dissertation entitled Maltreatment, Emotional Responses to Abuse, and Trauma Among Adolescents Engaging in Sexual or Non-Sexual Delinquency, which was funded by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Pre-doctoral Research Grant. Dr. Bosetti’s research explores developmental antecedents to juvenile delinquency behaviors, the role of childhood maltreatment victimization and trauma in the etiology of adolescent offending, and emotional processing risk factors that differentiate youth who commit general delinquent offenses from youth who engage in sexually abusive behaviors. Moreover, her recent scholarship highlights the role of accessible, positive sex education as a tool for the primary prevention of sexual violence. Her study What's Your Pleasure? Investigating Adult Toy Store Employees as Positive Community-Based Sex Educators received funding from the Spencer Foundation Small Research Grants on Education program, a highly competitive national funding mechanism. Dr. Bosetti serves on the editorial board of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, and will continue researching the safety and victimization experiences of juvenile justice involved youth in the hopes of informing the implementation of developmentally responsive juvenile justice practices.

Email: rebecca.bosetti@uky.edu