FACULTY OF HEALTH AND SOCIETY | Seminar
The search for a political knowledge base for social work practice and research

Welcome to the Seminar in Social Work with Rudi Roose, Professor of Social Work, Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University, Belgium.

The seminar will be in English.

Abstract

Across Europe and beyond, nationalist, neoliberal, and populist discourses are gaining political ground. These developments pose major challenges to social work, where social problems are increasingly framed as individual failures. As these ideologies shape social policy, space for inclusive, democratic, and emancipatory practice narrows. Social work is pushed into controlling roles, while exclusionary and disciplinary rhetorics become normalized.

This shift is also related to the profession’s knowledge base. When social work practitioners and researchers adopt dominant discourses uncritically, it risks reproducing the very ideologies it should challenge. I argue that the current epistemological foundation often lacks connection to ontological and axiological questions, reduces theoretical knowledge to technical implementation (e.g. EBP), privileges order over ambiguity, and treats key concepts like human rights and social justice as unquestioned common sense.

In this session, drawing on a case study in child welfare and protection, I discuss how social work professionals and researchers can adopt more political knowledge base.
Rudi Roose is head of the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University, Belgium. His research interest focuses on the development of critical pedagogies for social work and the construction of a counter hegemonic knowledge base. He is editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Social Work and chair of the International Social Work & Society Academy (TiSSA – www.tissa.net)

Chairman

Kettil Nordesjö, docent, Institutionen för socialt arbete, Malmö universitet

Practical information

You are welcome to participate in the seminar on site in Niagara. If you are an external participant, you need to register at kettil.nordesjo@mau.se no later than the day before the seminar, as access cards are required to enter the hall.

The seminar in social work is a seminar series arranged by the Department of Social Work (ISA). If you have any questions, please contact the seminar coordinator, Kettil Nordesjö.