Julie Ficarra specializes in critical approaches to partnership development centered on mutuality, reciprocity, and solidarity-building, particularly in university/community relationships that support engaged learning. Her research focuses on the impact of students on the communities that host them during study, intern, research, and service abroad programs. She is particularly interested in issues of race, gender, class, nationality and language in the development and implementation of North/South partnerships, and challenging unequal relations of power through discourse and program design.