~ RGVRC Affiliate Scholar ~

William Wical is a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Center for Gun Violence Solutions. His research focuses on the emotional experiences of Black men who survive gunshot wounds and participate in hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs). He employs ethnographic methods as the primary mode of understanding the social experiences of those who receive supportive services through one of these programs. Wical’s work underscores that attention to the ways Black men who survive gunshot wounds feel, determine what constitutes effective violence prevention, and subjectively experience trauma are vital for developing culturally and structurally competent services. In examining how HVIP participants interpret their emotional experiences related to trauma, healing, and loss to make claims about society, themselves, and justice, Wical seeks to challenge the dominant politics of care in HVIPs—troubling the use of trauma as the primary analytic for understanding the experiences of Black men who survive gunshot wounds. Wical’s work has been published in American Journal of Men’s Health, Violence and Gender, The Journal of Primary Prevention, Preventive Medicine, and elsewhere.