Social Work in Times of Crisis – Students from Sweden, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Germany Discuss the Role of Social Work in Multiple Crises

Bielefeld (hsbi). Throwback to June 2024 – around 30 students from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Sofia University (Bulgaria), the University of Kyiv (Ukraine) and Hochschule Bielefeld – University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSBI) meet in Bielefeld for over a week. They are all students in Social Work or Social Transformation Studies programmes and discuss the role and task of social work in (multiple) crises and global transformation processes. In groups with an international mix, students deal with various questions: What challenges and tasks is social work currently facing in the different countries? Or how can social workers raise more public awareness for the rights of people who depend on their support?

Professor Dr. Anna Lena Rademaker has been offering this international seminar at the Faculty of Social Sciences since 2021 – initially digitally as virtual mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic and since 2023 with a one-week in-person meeting of students and lecturers, which takes place on one of the partner universities’ campuses and allows for intensive group work. “We prepare and follow up on these meetings digitally,” says Professor Rademaker. “It’s one thing we have taken over from online teaching. But personal contact and the intensive discussions on how to deal with global crises in an international comparison simply cannot be replaced!”

Making society aware of challenges

“With the seminar, I would like to offer our students a space in which they can test methods and techniques of interference in society together and build international networks for their future professional practice.”
Seminar coordinator Professor Dr. Anna Lena Rademaker

In terms of didactics, Professor Dr. Anna Lena Rademaker and the international team of lecturers pursue an innovative path in the international encounter: they combine ‘problem-based learning’ with a performative approach to social science. In their own small projects, the students analyse, discuss and present artistically – in the form of enactment, exhibitions, poems, debates and much more – how they can make the public aware of crises and transformation processes and the resulting social consequences for people. Students thus do not only face international comparison, but also acquire important skills to raise awareness of their target groups’ interests within society in the future.

“The last few years in which we conducted the international seminar show that the collaboration in international working groups is the most valuable part for the students,” says Professor Rademaker. “They already bring a great deal of expertise – however, the students learn even more with each other, from each other and about one another than we could ever have taught them in the seminar.”

A multi-dimensional, international approach to sustainability

Ecological, business-related, health-related, social and many other aspects of sustainability are inextricably linked. To foster positive global development processes, the idea of a good life for all must be linked to human rights.

“Not only since the pandemic have crises seemed to be ubiquitous, even if we are not confronted with the parallelism of crises for the first time in history,” says Karen Heid, research associate and doctoral candidate at HSBI, who conducted the seminar together with Professor Rademaker. “Globalisation and an increased connectedness through media makes global problems more present. This affects everyone.”

Social work plays a central role

Social work – which is committed to equal opportunities, the implementation of human rights and social sustainability – plays a central role in addressing the consequences of global crises and transformation processes for particularly vulnerable groups in the community. These consequences are linked nationally and internationally and make it necessary for social workers to have a global perspective.

“With the seminar, I would like to offer our students a space in which they can test methods and techniques of interference in society together and build international networks for their future professional practice,” says Professor Rademaker. We can no longer think about social problems and their consequences from a purely national perspective. What tomorrow’s students have to bring with them are intercultural competence and networking. “I think this is particularly true in the area of health-related social work,” Professor Rademaker continues. “In these fields of action, there is still a lack of perception and – quite essentially – legal foundations for social work as a profession.”

Arts-based advocacy

The seminar on Bielefeld Campus did not only take place in HSBI’s lecture rooms. In addition to a guided tour of the Global Goals cycle route in Bielefeld starting at Welthaus Bielefeld, students attended a film screening in the arthouse cinema “Kamera” and took a performative approach to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) at Theaterwerkstatt Bethel.

The teaching units were chosen to convey performative methods and techniques to the participants with which they can raise public awareness of the consequences of global crises. “On the one hand, we discuss more freely if we are not sitting in the lecture room in rows,” says Heid. In addition, she says that the group dynamics arising from shared experiences contribute greatly to the teaching/learning process of all participants.

“Supporting each other hand-in-hand, together we form a resilient band.”

 “The students’ projects show a diverse range of problems for society and social work, both from a national and international perspective. These are particularly related to questions of justice,” concludes Karen Heid. The presentation of the project results on the last day of the seminar shows the diversity of competences and perspectives that students already have from their international work and education. For example, one group of students created a domestic-violence-themed composite photograph with accompanying music. The presentation was intended to provide an impetus for a debate and discussion on the subject, which is often associated with stigma, and to break the silence around it.

Another group of students produced an interactive documentary film about the situation of women in Afghanistan and, in particular, restrictions on girls’ and young women’s access to education.

In addition, there was a play with participation and interaction elements for the audience. Attention was drawn to the burden and overload of social workers in a system threatened by a shortage of skilled workers and de-professionalisation. In the course of this performance, the students emphasised that a network or community is necessary to counteract the pressure and burden on a sectoral policy level. Finally, a poem written by a participant was presented (see box).

Off to Sofia in 2025!

In the summer semester 2025, Sofia University will host the seminar from 9 to 13 June 2025, giving students of HSBI and the University of Gothenburg the opportunity to discover Bulgaria’s capital and discuss “Social Work in Times of Crisis” together. Preparations are already underway!

For the text: Anna Lena Rademaker, Karen Heid and Anne Pollmann