Speakers

CONFIRMED KEY NOTE SPEAKERS

  • Sabine Andresen

    Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
    Sabine Andresen is Professor for social pedagogy and family research at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2016 she is the head of the national Independent Commission on Child Sexual Abuse. She is one of the PIs of the global study “Children’s Worlds”. And she is a PI of the DFG (German Research Funding Organisation) Graduate School “Doing Transition” together with Tübingen University, 1st funding period 2017 – 2021. Her research interests are empirical studies on child and family well-being, child sexual abuse in families, narratives of adult survivors of sexual abuse, prevention studies, child poverty and social services, childhood vulnerability.
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  • Doris Bühler-Niederberger

    University of Wuppertal, Germany
    Doris Bühler-Niederberger is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. In her research she focuses on the social structuration of processes of growing-up, especially on welfare and educational institutions dealing with childhood and their respective impact. She works towards a more general approach of (social) age as a dimension of social structure and social order in different societies. Recent publications focused on children, youth and violence as well as on age transitions.
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  • Jeroen Dekker

    University of Groningen, Netherlands
    Dr Jeroen J.H. Dekker is Honorary Professor of history and theory of education at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He was visiting fellow at the European University Institute (Florence), Columbia University, Sassari University, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin). He is a former President of ISCHE, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Paedagogica Historica, Visiting Member of the Editorial Board of History of Education, Member of the Advisory Board of Historia y Memoria de la Educación, and of the scientific committee of Annali di storia dell’Educazione e delle Istituzioni Educative Education. From 2016 to 2019 he was at the request of the Dutch government a Member of the Committee for the Study on Institutional Child Abuse. His publications deal with longue durée history of education, childhood, parenting, and children at risk.
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  • Thomas Gabriel

    Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland
    Thomas Gabriel is Head of the Institute of Childhood, Youth and Family at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland. His research focuses on child and youth care, especially on the history of residential care, foster care, adoption and leaving care. Among other projects, he is currently conducting research financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation on "Domestic Adoption in Switzerland: continuities, changes, and outcomes of irreversible family placements in the 20th and 21st centuries" and he is part of the swiss research team of “Children’s Worlds” an internationally coordinated study on child well-being.
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  • Emily Keddell

    University of Otago, New Zealand
    Emily Keddell is an Associate Professor in Social and Community Work at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research focusses on the child protection system, specifically inequalities in system contact, decision-making variability, knowledge interpretation in practice, the use of algorithmic decision tools, and policy analysis. She is currently engaged in a project examining what helps prevent babies being removed from their families of origin.
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  • Urszula Markowska-Manista

    University of Warsaw, Poland
    Urszula Markowska-Manista is field researcher in education in culturally diversified environments and indigenous childhood and youth studies concerning children’s rights. Since 2016, she has been the director of and lecturer in the MA Childhood Studies and Children’s Rights (MACR) and is assistant professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She was acting chairholder of the UNESCO Janusz Korczak Chair at the M. Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw (2017-18) and has conducted extensive field research in Central Africa, the South Causcasus and Central Europe.
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CONFIRMED INVITED SYMPOSIA CHAIRS

  • Adrian van Breda

    University of Johannesburg, South Africa
    Adrian D. van Breda is professor of social work at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He researches the resilience processes that facilitate better-than-expected transitional outcomes among young people leaving residential care. He uses a person-in-environment resilience perspective and is particularly interested in the interactions that take place between young people and their social environments in adverse conditions.
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  • Donald Baumann

    Saint Edward’s University, United States
    Donald Baumann has a Ph.D. is in Social Psychology and over thirty years experience designing and managing large-scale research projects as both a Principal Investigator and as a Project Director. He has been on the faculties of the University of Texas, Trinity University and Saint Edwards University. He has directed numerous national multi-year research and evaluation projects over the years. He is retired from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services where he was head of the Evaluation Section of Child Protective Services. He currently teaches at St. Edwards University and was a Senior Research Fellow at the American Humane Association. His areas of interest are decision-making, risk assessment and disproportionality. He has written over seventy five articles, reports and book chapters.
  • Amaia Bravo Arteaga

    University of Oviedo, Spain
    Amaia Bravo Arteaga is Senior Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She co-directs the Family and Childhood Research Group (GIFI) and develops its specific lines in the assessment of needs of unaccompanied foreign minors and in mental health problems of children and young people in residential care. She is currently making research on therapeutic residential care programs in Spain, assessing needs and profiles of young people as well as quality of services. She has a long experience training residential workers and practitioners in the field of residential care and childcare.
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  • Jo Dixon

    University of York, United Kingdom
    Jo Dixon is a Research Fellow and the Co-Director of the Child Welfare Research Group in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, England. She has been carrying out research with young people in and leaving care since joining the University of York in 2000. She specialises in research on young people's transitions from care to independent adulthood. Her research interests include children and young people in care and on the edges of care, and innovative policy and practice approaches to supporting them. She supports young people's active participation in research about them.
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  • Florian Eßer

    University of Osnabrueck, Germany
    Dr Florian Eßer is a professor of education and social pedagogy research at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. His work links research in child and youth care with contemporary approaches in the interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies. His latest publications focused on the agency of children and young people in residential childcare.
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  • Nuria Fuentes-Peláez

    University of Barcelona, Spain
    Dr. Nuria Fuentes-Peláez is professor at University of Barcelona, Faculty of Education. Currently she is teaching and researching in the department of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education. Her research is related to the child protection, children welfare system and family education, especially regarding foster care and adoption mainly using action research orientation. Her research interest had led her to address different issues such as kinship and non-kinship foster care, birth families interventions, child participation, resilience and socioeducational training and support programs (design, implementation and evaluation).
  • Rawan W. Ibrahim

    German Jordanian University, Jordan
    Dr. Rawan W. Ibrahim is an Assistant Professor at the German Jordanian University. Her specialisation lies in child protection and alternative care. She has been supporting the Jordanian government in developing the first foster care program in the region. Her research interests include preparation and post-care support of youth transitioning from substitute care to adulthood, implementation science and the development of community and evidence-based programs to divert children from institutionalised care.
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  • Marco Ius

    University of Padua, Italy
    Marco Ius is a research assistant in Social Pedagogy at the at the University of Padova, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Italy. He is Member of LabRIEF and of the scientific board of the National Program P.I.P.P.I., and researches on resilience and social work with families living in vulnerable contexts, connecting the participative and transformative evaluation and community resilience within an ecological framework.
  • Hélène Join-Lambert

    University of Paris Nanterre, France
    Dr Hélène Join-Lambert, Assistant Professor in Education at Université Paris Nanterre, France, is a trained qualitative sociologist. Her research focuses on family support and child protection internationally with a special interest in autonomy and participation in decision-making, whether through the perspective of service users (young people and their parents) or of practitioners. She has led research projects on social services for families and participated in several Europe-wide projects, where ethical aspects of research with young people have been a major aspect.
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  • Jana Knot-Dickscheit

    University of Groningen, Netherlands
    Dr. Jana Knot-Dickscheit works as Associate Professor at the University of Groningen, Department of Child and Family Welfare, the Netherlands. Her research is practice-oriented and focuses on the evaluation of interventions for families with multiple and complex problems and so-called at-risk families. The collaboration of professionals with these families and professionals among each other is another area of interest. In addition, Jana works as a cognitive behavioural therapist and mental health psychologist in a mental healthcare institution.
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  • Stefan Köngeter

    University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen, Switzerland
    Dr. phil. habil. Stefan Köngeter is currently Professor for social work and co-head of the research institute social work and social spaces at the University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen, Switzerland. His research interests comprise a broad range of topics in social pedagogy, social work and sociology: transnationalization of social welfare, child and youth care, residential care, professionalization of social pedagogy and social work, history of the social work.
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  • Mónica López López

    University of Groningen, Netherlands
    Mónica López López is an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. For the last 15 years, Mónica has been actively seeking a way of improving child protection systems through research on decision-making, with a special interest in assessments and decisions of out-of-home placement and reunification, decisions of matching children with foster families, and participation of children and families in decision-making. In her research, Mónica focuses on the voice of the service users, children and families, as a powerful instrument to improve welfare services.
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  • Wolfgang Schröer

    University of Hildesheim, Germany
    Wolfgang Schröer, Prof. Dr., Institute of Social Pedagogy and Organisation Studies, University of Hildesheim, Germany. His main research fields are child and youth welfare, residential and foster care, care leaving, youth research and transitions to adulthood, transnational social exchange and support. Chairman of the consulting group in children and youth task for the German government (Bundesjugendkuratorium).
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  • Sara Serbati

    University of Padua, Italy
    Sara Serbati is a research assistant in Social Pedagogy at the University of Padova, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Italy. Her major interest is related to participatory evaluation of social work practice, also intended as a learning path able to connect research, practice, and policy making. She won the ESWRA Annual Awards for Outstanding Publication in European Social Work Research in 2018.
  • Jorge F. del Valle

    University of Oviedo, Spain
    Dr. Jorge F. del Valle is Professor at the University of Oviedo in Spain. He is the director of the Child and Family Research Group (GIFI), focused on program evaluation in residential and foster care and needs assessments of particular groups, such as young asylum seekers or children suffering from mental health problems. As a result of this research, he has developed a Recording and Assessment System for Residential Child Care (SERAR) as well as a system (ARQUA) to evaluate the quality of child residential care facilities.
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  • Maren Zeller

    University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen, Switzerland
    Prof. Dr. Maren Zeller trained as social pedagogue, did her PhD in educational sciences focusing on education and learning in the field of residential care. Over the past years she was involved in a range of research and practice development project and has published widely in the area of social work and related services for vulnerable groups of children and young people including looked after children, care leavers, and unaccompanied minors. Formally based in Germany she now teaches and carries on research at FHSG, Switzerland.
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