Dr. Megan Welsh Carroll

headshot of Dr. Megan Welsh Carroll

Pronouns: She/Her/Ella
Professor of Public Administration & Criminal Justice
Director of Institute for Innovative Governance
Founding Director of Project for Sanitation Justice
School of Public Affairs
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts

SDSU

Bio

Megan Welsh Carroll, PhD, MSW, is an interdisciplinary social scientist and educator working at the intersection of health, safety, housing, and environmental justice. She is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Innovative Governance at San Diego State University (SDSU). She teaches in the School of Public Affairs within the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts. 

Dr WC is Founding Director of The Project for Sanitation Justice, a grassroots organization that maps and provides other high-quality data on public restroom access and other WaSH resources in San Diego County and across California. She is also a collaborator of the Homelessness Survival Strategies Lab @ SDSU https://hss.sdsu.edu/ 

Nearly a quarter of all unhoused people in the United States live in California, and California is home to nearly half of people living outdoors (“unsheltered”) in the U.S. The Project for Sanitation Justice’s transdisciplinary team knows that people experiencing problems need to be part of the solution. PSJ partners with unhoused communities and direct service providers to educate city leaders and policymakers on how providing WaSH services improves public health and benefits all people in the community. It also empowers those who are unsheltered to connect with needed services, giving them hope. Restrooms aren’t peoples’ favorite topic, but we all need them. All of us deserve human dignity. Learn more about PSJ’s work at bathrooms.sdsu.edu

As a research mentor and instructor, Dr WC teaches students to be effective communicators as they seek innovative solutions on issues around homelessness, public health, safety, the criminal-legal system, and other pressing social issues. Students in her classes and on her research team have the opportunity to partner with community organizations on real world problems. This better prepares them for a broad range of careers from social work and government to health services and law enforcement. She has received the Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member in Public Administration and Criminal Justice, and the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts at SDSU. 

Dr Megan Welsh Carroll has a PhD in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. She has a Masters of Social Work from Temple University. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from University of California, Berkeley. Her research has appeared in The LA Times, Voice of San Diego, The Atlantic, The San Diego Union Tribune, KPBS, and on NBC7 San Diego.

Education

  • Ph.D. 2009-2015 - Criminal Justice - The City University of New York Graduate Center & John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY
    Dissertation: Collisions of the personal and the public in post-Realignment California: 
    How women and frontline workers manage post-incarceration work
    – Graduate Research Fellowship, National Institute of Justice, 2013 
    – Outstanding Dissertation Award, PhD Program in Criminal Justice, 2015
  • MSW 2005-2008 - Social Work, Concentration: Public Policy and Community Organizing - Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
  • BA 1998-2005 - Social Welfare - University of California, Berkeley        

Certifications

  • Certified in Mental Health First Aid through the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and the CSU’s Office of Innovative Teaching and Learning.
  • Trained as an SDSU Economic Crisis Response Team Advocate
  • Trained as an UndocuAlly through SDSU’s Undocumented Resource Area

Awards & Honors

  • SDSU Excellence in Community Engaged Learning (EXcel) Award, 2025
  • Dignity Defender of the Year, 2023 - Think Dignity, 2023
  • Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, 2023
  • Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member, Criminal Justice (graduate), 2021-2022
  • Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member, Criminal Justice (graduate), 2020-2021
  • Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member, Public Administration (graduate), 2020-2021
  • Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member, Criminal Justice (graduate), 2019-2020
  • Outstanding Faculty Award for most influential faculty member, Criminal Justice (undergraduate), 2015-2016

Courses

  • CJ 304 Race, Equity, and the Criminal Justice System
  • CJ 543 Community Resources in Criminal Justice
  • PA 605 Seminar in Research Methods
  • PA 795 Capstone Seminar in Public Affairs

Directed Student Research

Get in touch! During Academic Year 2025-26, Dr WC is recruiting undergraduate student researchers to join the PSJ team while earning academic credit, via the Faculty-Student Mentoring Program. All majors are welcome to apply! PSJ’s research may also be of particular interest to students of health communication, sustainability, social work, public health, public administration, public policy/economics, geography, gender studies, and/or website/graphic design. 

Media

Media Interviews

Publications

Welsh Carroll, M. (2025). “It’s not something that can wait”: Defining and promoting gender-inclusive standards for WaSH access for Californians without housing. Health & Place, 95. https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1353-8292(25)00095-4

Sangsefidi, Y., Rios, A., Bagheri, K., Welsh Carroll, M., Davani, H. (2025). Integrating social data and engineering solutions for developing resilient water infrastructure against coastal climate change. Scientific Reports, 15, 7241. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-91147-0

Welsh Carroll, M., O’Donnell, R., Rios, A., Kodituwakku, L., Zampa, G., Swayne, M.R.E., Felner, J.K., Calzo, J.P. (2025). There’s no place to go in “America’s Finest City”: Basic sanitation deprivation as punishment in San Diego, California, USA. Punishment & Society, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745241246650

Rios, A., Davani, H., & Welsh Carroll, M. (2024). Perceptions of flooding risk and water resilience in the southernmost city in California. Findings. https://findingspress.org/article/127477-perceptions-of-flooding-risk-and-water-resilience-in-the-southernmost-city-in-california

Calzo, J., Carson, J., Felner, J., Swayne, M.R.E., & Welsh Carroll, M. (2024). Restroom access and health among people experiencing homelessness: A focus on San Diego, CA. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 14(11), 1155–1168. https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2024.160 

Welsh, M. & Felner, J. (2020, February 11).   "Why cities must end their reliance on police to manage homelessness – and how they can do it." Scholars Strategy Network

Felner, J., Welsh, M., & Calzo, J. (2020, February 11).   "Increasing access to public bathrooms is critical for San Diegans’ health" Scholars Strategy Network

Welsh, M. (2020).   "Examining the Validity of Traffic Stop Data: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Police Officer Compliance." Police Quarterly.

Flanigan, S. & Welsh, M. (2020).   "Unmet needs of individuals experiencing homelessness near San Diego waterways: The roles of displacement and overburdened service systems." ​Journal of Health and Human Services Administration.

Welsh, M., Chanin, J., & Henry, S. (2020).   "Complex colorblindness in police processes and practices." Social Problems.

Welsh, Megan (2019).   "Collisions of the personal and the public: How front-line welfare workers manage carceral citizens " Journal of Women and Social Work

Welsh, M. (2019).   "How Formerly Incarcerated Women Confront the Limits of Caring and the Burdens of Control amid California’s Carceral Realignment." Feminist Criminology.

Welsh, M. (2018).   "Conceptualizing the Personal Touch: Experiential Knowledge and Gendered Strategies in Community Supervision Work." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Chanin, J., Welsh, M., Nurge, D., & Henry, S. (2016).   "Traffic enforcement in San Diego: An analysis of SDPD vehicle stops in 2014 and 2015" Report presented to the San Diego City Council’s Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods committee on October 26, 2016 and November 30, 2016, and presented to the full City Council on February 27, 2017.

Welsh, M. (2015).   "Categories of Exclusion: The Transformation of Formerly-Incarcerated Women into 'Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents'." Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare.

Welsh, M. and Rajah, V. (2014).   "Rendering Invisible Punishments Visible: Using Institutional Ethnography in Feminist Criminology." Feminist Criminology.