Caroline Schmitt
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Growing up in Trier, Germany's oldest city in the border region to France, Luxembourg and Belgium, I became interested early on in living together under conditions of diversity and the question of how inclusion can be shaped in moving and pluralized societies. I have turned this question into my profession.
My main areas in research, teaching and further education are:
- Diversity, Inclusion & Peace
- Ecosocial Work, Green Social Work & Sustainability
- Intersectional Crisis & Disaster Research
- Solidarity in Social Work & in Social Movements
- (Forced) Migration & Postmigrant Society
- Transnational Social Work
At Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, I am employed as a professor for ecosocial work and care. Previously, I was a professor for migration and inclusion research at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, a professor ad interim in the field of social work at the University of Trier and a research associate at the University of Mainz in Germany. My activities as a researcher and lecturer have also taken me to the University of Innsbruck (Austria), to Kent University in Istanbul (Türkyie), the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic) and to Kangnam University in Yongin (South Korea).
In the course of my academic work, I cooperate closely with social services, educational institutions, and civil society alliances (engaged science & arts-based research).
In my diversity & inclusion trainings I experience the interlocking of science and practice as an enormous enrichment.
Lecture Series
Just published: Anthology "Krieg, Konflikt und Soziale Arbeit" (2024)
Our anthology "Krieg, Konflikt und Soziale Arbeit. Herausforderungen, Visionen und Praxen zur Friedensgestaltung" is out now!
Social work needs a systematic anchoring of war and peace in its discipline and profession. It has a wealth of experience in dealing with war and the consequences of war, peacebuilding and transformation, especially in the Global South and in Eastern Europe. However, this knowledge is hardly known, not accessible enough and not sufficiently theoretically and methodologically processed. This anthology aims to bring together the experiences in these areas and to further develop peace-oriented social work in a dialog of diverse perspectives, practices and visions.
Thank you, dear Karsten Kiewitt, Ronald Lutz and Tanja Kleibl, for our collaboration. A big thank you also to all the authors who have contributed their expertise on this important topic.
Habilitation published (2024)
My habilitation was published in 2024. In this book, I connect debates on inclusion, forced migration, and social work, and outline considerations for a comprehensive societal inclusion program. The book delineates a heterogeneity-theoretical, power-critical, and relational understanding of inclusion and uses this approach in empirical analyses. This approach cannot be reduced to a narrow view of forced migration. It unfolds a critically reflective research and field of action that deals with the normality of human movements without trivializing experienced suffering and social inequalities—towards an inclusive, solidary, convivial society.
Free download here.
New book on international social work & social movements (2023 & 2024)
Historically and to the present day, social work has been closely intertwined with social movements, both as allies and in opposition to them. This engagement finds its expression in conventions (human rights), cooperation (world conferences) and coalitions (NGOs). This textbook offers an insight into the connections between social movements and social work from an international perspective, teaching their historical and theoretical foundations and illustrating them in a practical way with case studies from around the world. It aims to bring the perspectives of a ‘global social work profession and discipline’, and thus the international and political dimensions of social work, back to the forefront of the discipline.
With contributions by
Susan Arndt | Mario Faust-Scalisi | Ernst Kočnik | Claudia Lohrenscheit | Rahel More | Hans Karl Peterlini | Monika Pfaller-Rott | Andrea Frieda Schmelz | Caroline Schmitt | Marion Sigot | Ute Straub
More information here.
Video project "Voices of Solidarity - Botschaften der Solidarität" (2022)
Digital Lecture Series "No War. Bildung als Praxis des Friedens" (Winter Semester 2022/2023)
You are cordially invited to participate in the digital lecture series. Link to online participation.
Since February 24, 2022, with the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we have been experiencing a previously unimaginable increase of the "catastrophic" in our time. Climate change and the still rampant pandemic are now joined by yet another war. This war once again shows the fragility of our globalized world and the interdependencies within it. The diversity of problems in this globalized world is once again apparent, as if in a burning glass: Dependencies on oil, gas, coal; supply chain and supply problems. Social and global inequality will become more entrenched and the vulnerable, as in climate change and the pandemic, are the "losers".
Many questions arise in light of this, including:
- What is peace?
- What role can or should social work play in the "catastrophic" in our time?
As a human rights profession, social work must take a position and at the same time see itself as an actor in peacebuilding and conceptualize a notion of peace. In doing so, it can and must draw on diverse international experiences in the context of "peacebuilding", in which it has been involved as a profession for a long time.
New book on solidarity, forced migration, climate crisis & social work (2021)
Please check our new publication on solidarity in times of crisis (together with Marc Hill)!
Find the newest review here.
Thank you very much, dear Karin
E. Sauer, for your appreciative feedback!
Feel free to download your free paper!
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