University of Ljubljana, Faculty of social work (Web)

Time: 07.08.11.2025
Venue: Ljubljana
Proposals by: 30.09.2024

The International Symposium of Social Work will mark 70 years of education, professionalisation and academisation of social work in Slovenia and at the Faculty of Social Work, the only educational and academic institution for social work studies in the country. The organisers invite friends, colleagues, and the academic community to celebrate this important anniversary together. The International Symposium aims to highlight the wide range of social work topics that are currently particularly relevant, especially from a critical and historical perspective.
At a time when crises due to neo-liberal policies, ecological disasters, wars, and the militarization of Europe and the world are multiplying, we seem to be in the midst of an era very similar to the historical period that gave rise to social work over a century ago. At a time of accelerating poverty, impoverished communities, the erosion of the common good, the rise of structural and interpersonal violence, the emergence of scapegoating ideologies, and the mushrooming of migration, social work, and its resisting force are all the more important.
But in such a world, social work itself is not embraced with open arms by neoliberal policies and populists. As social problems increase, so do the discourses that emphasize the inefficiency of the public sector and the need for its disappearance, the discourse of social work as a ‚cost‘ and a ‚burden‘, and the individualization and pathologization of people’s economic and social problems. Societies appear to be a collection of individuals responsible for their well-being rather than a society in which people are interconnected and can only exist in mutual interdependence and awareness of global interconnectedness. Systemically marginalized, social workers are also perceived, at least in Slovenia, as incapable of solving people’s complex problems.
In such a difficult context, we are interested in the resilience of social work as well as in its critical reflection of these current processes and its ability to understand phenomena from a historical perspective. Read more … (PDF)

Quelle: Irene Messinger: Newsletter Verfolgung/Widerstand von Fürsorgerinnen aus Wien, 1930er Jahre, Nr. 14