Program

Click here to dowload the full program in .pdf 

 In the program you can find also time and place of the accepted presentations. 

NOTE: at the end of this page and on the EASSW website (www.eassw.com) you find the call for a SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK (deadline for submission: 30 October 2015)
 

 

program

DAY 1 - Monday 29th June 2015

• 14.00 - 17.30: pre-conference events and conference registration
• 18.00 - 20.00: conference welcome events
  • Welcome Ceremony: addresses from the authorities, Silvana Mordeglia (President of Consiglio Nazionale dell'Ordine degli Assistenti Sociali - Italian National Association of Social Workers) and University of Milano-Bicocca representatives (Carla Facchini, Director of the Department of Sociology and Social Research; Mara Tognetti e Alberto Giasanti, Presidents of the BA and MA program in Social Work and PROGEST); chair: Teresa Bertotti, Local Committee
  • Welcome cocktail

DAY 2 - Tuesday 30th June 2015

• 9.00 - 10.00: welcome and opening speeches by Cristina Messa, Rector of University of Milano Bicocca, Sue Lawrence, President EASSW and Annamaria Campanini, President AIDOSS; chair: Alessandro Sicora, coordinator of Conference Steering and Program Committees
• 10.00 - 10.15: "Mend the Gap - A Challenge for Social Work Education!" video produced by PowerUs (click here)
• 10.15 - 11.00: keynote speaker 1 - Jan Fook, Professor of Higher Education Pedagogy, Leeds Trinity University (click here):  The Challenges Revealed by Critical Reflection for Social Work Education, and how Critical Reflection can help (abstract at the bottom of this page)
• 11.00 - 11.30: coffee break
• 11.30 - 12.15: keynote speaker 2 - Margareta Wohlstrom, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Geneva, Switzerland (click here): Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: A Timely Opportunity for Social Workers’ Leadership in Building Social Resilience (abstract at the bottom of this page)
• 12.15 - 13.00: debate
• 13.00 - 14.00: book presentation (with Sue Lawrence and Enrique Pastor Seller): PASTOR SELLER, Enrique y MARTINEZ ROMAN; Maria Asunción (Coords.) (2014). Trabajo Social en el siglo XXI: una pespectiva internacional comparada Madrid: Grupo 5; poster presentations and lunch
• 14.00 - 15.45: parallel sessions 1
• 15.45 - 16.15: coffee break
• 16.15 - 18.00: parallel sessions 2
• 18.00 - 20.00: EASSW General Assembly

DAY 3 - Wednesday 1st July 2015

• 9.00 - 10.45: parallel sessions 3
• 10.45 - 11.15: coffee break
• 11.15 - 13.00: parallel sessions 4
• 13.00 - 14.00: poster presentations, interest groups meetings, workshop "How to get published" (click here for program and go to "During the conference") and lunch
• 14.00 - 15.45: parallel sessions 5
• 15.45 - 16.15: coffee break
• 16.15 - 18.00: parallel sessions 6
• 18.00 - 19.00: AIDOSS General Assembly, interest groups meetings and workshop "Disseminating your research: Publishing in peer reviewed academic journails" (click here for program and go to "During the conference")
• 20.00: cultural evening and dinner at "Dopo Lavoro Bicocca (Address: Via Chiese 2 Milano - gate HANGAR BICOCCA - click here for the map and go to the end of the page - No participation allowed without ticket)

DAY 4 - Thursday 2nd July 2014

• 9.00 - 9.45: keynote speaker 3 - Iain Ferguson, Honorary Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, University of the West of Scotland (click here): Hope over fear: social work education towards 2025 (abstract at the bottom of this page)
• 9.45 - 10.30: EASSW Honorary Lecture, sponsored by the European Journail of Social Work - Walter Lorenz, Rector and Professor for Applied Social Science at the Free University of Bozen / Bolzano (click here): Social Work Education in Europe: towards 2025 (abstract at the bottom of this page)
• 10.30 - 11.00: debate
• 11.00 - 11.30: coffee break
• 11.30 - 13.00 : final remarks, closing ceremony, handover to 2017 Conference organisers
• 13.00 - 14.00: interest groups meetings
• afternoon: field visits (click here for program and go to "After the conference")

There are some additional conference events: Pre-Conference Symposia, During the Conference and Post Conference Events. See at the page “additional conference events” for details.

Keynote speeches - abstracts

We are pleased to remind you that the Key Note presentations and Honorary Lecture presentation will be simultaneously translated from English into Italian, French, Spanish in the plenary sessions.

The Challenges Revealed by Critical Reflection for Social Work Education, and how Critical Reflection can help

Jan Fook
Professor of Higher Education Pedagogy
Leeds Trinity University

As social work educators we are much concerned with a multitude of dilemmas, as the themes for the conference testify. How do we educate for values, particularly social justice in the face of neo-liberal trends; how do we integrate what feel like the relatively separate worlds of theory, practice and research to make for better-rounded professionals; how do we prepare students to maintain local responsiveness in the context of a global awareness? Whilst many of these issues are not new, they continue to reign as prime concerns.

Over the last few decades I have conducted numerous critical reflection workshops with a range of professionals. What I have found is that the persistence of these very dilemmas is in part maintained through the intellectual lenses we use to conceptualise them. This is not to deny that there are very real material and historical conditions which bring about our current way of understanding what is happening, and which of course delineate to a large degree what is happening. What role therefore does and can critical reflection play in contributing to new and different approaches to some of these long-standing dilemmas?

In this paper I describe some of our more hidden and fundamental ways of thinking which may go unchallenged, but which need challenging in order for us to develop new ways of approaching some of these dilemmas. I finish by positing some new directions we might want to consider.

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: 
A Timely Opportunity for Social Workers’ Leadership in Building Social Resilience

Margareta Wahlström

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)
Geneva, Switzerland

Keywords: Sendai framework, disaster risk reduction, role of stakeholders and social vulnerability and social resilience

This paper highlights how social workers can be are a driving force for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. On 18 March 2015 at the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, representatives from 187 UN Member States adopted the Sendai Framework, with a vision of resilient people and resilient planet. The Framework aims to achieve a substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health by 2030, as well as losses of economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets. Such assets may belong to persons, businesses, communities and countries.
To achieve the expected outcome, governments and stakeholders need to create policy and take practical actions to prevent new disaster risks from accumulating, and to reduce existing disaster risk through implementation of integrated measures. Such measures fall in many different areas, including economic, social, health, cultural, educational, environmental measures. Their common aim is to prevent and reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to disaster, and thus strengthen resilience.
Social workers have made important contributions over the past 10 years to the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 – Building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters. Traditionally and through their daily work, social workers are engaged in disaster management, focusing on stress and trauma counselling, interventions in public health systems, hospitals, schools, and social welfare systems. The coming decade and the implementation of the Sendai Framework both provide and opportunity but also calls for a broader and more active role of social sciences and social work in contributing in areas such as understanding risk and stimulating behaviour that aim to protect people and communities rather than increase exposure to hazards and risk, research in to medium and long term impact of disasters on people and their life situations. How can public health and education systems contribute in a positive and sustained manner to reducing future risk and loss.
The paper will analyse the social aspects of disaster risk reduction and underline successes and gaps in the work over the decade past. It will also point to the understanding that social cohesion is of critical importance to resilience and communities abilities to protect themselves but also that it is little understood how to contribute to strengthen and use the social cohesion as an element of disaster risk reduction. Lastly, the paper will provide food-for-thought on how social workers can assume their leadership and make the fullest contribution to the four priority areas of the Sendai Framework, to reduce social vulnerability and build social resilience.

Hope over fear: social work education towards 2025

Iain Ferguson
Honorary Professor of Social Work and Social Policy
University of the West of Scotland

Prediction of possible futures is fraught with dangers. The actual development of capitalism proved to be very different from the fantasies of 19th century utopian socialists. Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation of ‘the end of history’ following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 now seems like a bad joke in the light of developments in the Middle East and the Ukraine. And as recently as ten years ago, who would have predicted that the neoliberal project would end in what is now widely viewed as the longest and deepest crisis of global capitalism?
Given that experience, predicting where social work education might be in 2025 is a potentially hazardous enterprise. Nevertheless, the recent resurgence of interest in utopian thinking reflects a widely-felt desire to go beyond ‘capitalist realism’ and to envisage different possibilities – a desire also reflected in political developments in Greece, Spain and Scotland. In addition, utopian thought does not need to be based on wishful thinking. Within the tradition of the Frankfurt School and the classical Marxist tradition more widely, constructing possible futures is based on the concept of immanent critique – in other words, identifying these trends, developments and possibilities inherent within the present situation which allow us to envisage alternatives to the dominant order.
Following an outline and critique of current trends within social work education as reflected both in the debates around the Global Definition of Social Work and also recent policy initiatives in English social work education, this paper will propose a model of radical social work education which challenges the neoliberal orthodoxy and seeks to identify the resources of hope – theoretical, historical, professional, and political - present in the current situation which can help us promote that model.

Social work education in Europe: towards 2025

Walter Lorenz
Rector and Professor for Applied Social Science
Free University of Bozen / Bolzano

Europe is experiencing a crisis of integration which manifests itself not only at the borders but in parallel at the dividing lines inside European societies. Recent economic developments globally and nationally enforce mobility on a scale reminiscent of the first industrial revolution with a comparable disruptive effect on social bonds. At the same time control measures at borders, but also at access points to economic and social support provisions are increasing with the effect of excluding vulnerable people more and more. Social work is being challenged by these developments into either adopting a ‘politically neutral’ role and concentrate on ‘rescuing’ individual cases or into asserting its political mandate and address also the structural causes of exclusion. In the latter case it contributes significantly to the re-affirmation of the European project based on inclusion.

 

SPECIAL ISSUE: CALL FOR PAPERS - EASSW Milan conference

The European Journal of Social Work, in association with the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW), will publish a special themed issue of papers arising from the EASSW Milan conference, 29th June – 2nd July 2015. The special issue will be guest-edited by Susan Lawrence and Alessandro Sicora.

Academic papers are invited from researchers who presented their paper at the Milan conference. Within the overarching theme of the conference - Social work education in Europe: towards 2025 – submitted papers, working from a strong theoretical or empirical research base, will highlight the main challenges, trends, developments and proposals for social work education and training over the next decade.
Papers for consideration should be submitted using the ScholarOne system on the journal website (www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ejsw) where further details about the journal and guidance for authors may also be found. When you submit your paper, please answer “Yes” to the question “Is your paper for consideration by the editors of a special issue?” and select Milan: Social work education in Europe: towards 2025 from the drop down menu. Please note that papers must not at the same time be submitted to any other journal. The deadline for submission of manuscripts is 30th October 2015.
Following peer review, all papers of appropriate quality standard will be published by the journal, either in the Milan conference special issue, if selected by the guest editors for inclusion, or in a regular issue of the journal.

Guest Editors: Susan Lawrence, President of the European Association of Schools of Social Work and Regional Vice President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work;  Alessandro Sicora, University of Calabria and University Ca’Foscari, Venice
Member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) and coordinator of the Steering Committee and Program Committee of the 2015 European conference on Social Work Education

The Milan conference, the first social work education conference in Europe for eight years, is organised by the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) and AIDOSS, the Italian national social work association, working with Milano Bicocca University and the service user and academic learning network PowerUS. Taylor and Francis, publisher of the European Journal of Social Work, are sponsoring the first EASSW Honorary Lecture at the conference, to be given by Professor Walter Lorenz.