The world experiences a pandemia that has consequences for everybody. However, it strikes harder on vulnerable groups, within all nations and on nations with weak economies and large, poor populations. It enlarges already growing differences between people. We also experience that liberal and democratic values are under pressure, also in Europe and in USA. In addition, we are facing huge challenges from environmental changes, which also leads to poverty and social conflict.
These global problems are important to social work and social work teaching. In this webinar, we will reflect on this situation, and discuss possible consequences for social work teaching.
Keynote Speakers:
Walter Lorenz was professor of social work at the Free University of Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, and has teaching contracts with Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. In his comprehensive research he has investigated the conditions of social work in Europe under changing political and cultural circumstances. His address to this webinar has an open title: “European policy developments, the NWSM and neoliberalism”.
Debbie Gonzalez (lecturer, social work, Humboldt State University, USA), Mary Dallas Allen (Professor, social work, University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA) and Lennart Sauer (Senior lecturer, PhD, Social work, Umeå University, Sweden): are editors of two special issues of “Journal of Comparative Social Work”, on impacts of Covid19 on social work. These issues will be published in November 2021 and January 2022. They will present their impressions after working with the articles to be published in the special issues.
Panel Discussion:
The webinar will also include a panel discussion, led by professor in social work Lars Uggerhøj at Aalborg University, Denmark. The title of this discussion is: “Where do we go from here?”
The webinar will take place on Zoom, on 20th of May, 2021. It starts at 19.00 Norwegian time, and lasts for four hours.
Participation is free, but you need to register to get a Zoom link for the webinar. To get this link, send an email to asgeir.solstad@nord.no