Braveheart Gillani

Braveheart Gillani, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at UNC Charlotte. His scholarship asks a simple, stubborn question: what makes belonging and wholeness possible for men who have been told wholeness is not theirs to have? Working at the level of macro social work and community development, his research and teaching trace how belonging becomes the bridge to wholeness and how communities, organizations, and systems can be redesigned to make that bridge available to more people. He explores these ideas at the personal, interpersonal and global level, considering both relational equity and time as tools of connection and belonging rather than othering.

Braveheart brings more than a decade of engineering experience in the global energy industry into conversation with training in social work and community-based system dynamics. He approaches masculinities through an intersectional lens, attentive to how race, gender, sexuality, and class shape who is granted access to belonging and wholeness, and who is denied it. His work spans working-class men in extractive industries learning a new language for what they feel, transmasculine people navigating new embodiment, and LGBTQ+ communities he has spent his career studying and standing alongside in their pursuit of health, safety, and flourishing.

His current research examines belonging, awe, and wholeness among men in Charlotte’s caring workforce and post-surgical pathways to belonging and wholeness for transmasculine adults. He is in the process of developing a masculinities research lab designed to serve local, national, and international communities. Braveheart is currently teaching graduate courses in Program Design, Research Methods and Advocacy.