IUW for 2025 is chosen! And this year the destinations will be Norway, Germany, Slovakia and Austria!

Listen to this podcast episode, recorded in HUMAK campus in Helsinki during the 2024 coordinators meeeting, to get to know more about the four different IUWs in 2025!

University of South-Easter Norway – Porsgrunn

Topic: Activities in Social Work

Welcome to the University of South-Eastern Norway! 

We employ 1,900 people and offers an education to about 17,000 students. We offer profession- and business-focused educational programmes, research and knowledge dissemination to high international standards.

ntroduction to Activities in Social Work

At SocNet98, we are excited to invite participants from our network of universities to the International University Week (IUW) 2025 in Norway, focusing on the theme of Activities in Social Work. This theme encompasses a diverse range of topics related to the methods and practices in social work, allowing participants to explore various experiences and cultural contexts in addressing different challenges.

Our primary goal for IUW 2025 is to foster international collaboration among students and educators, creating opportunities for them to engage, share insights, and learn from each other. We encourage students to interact, share their experiences with activities in social work, and develop new connections that can enhance their studies and research.

To enrich our workshops, we ask each participating university college to bring a case or issue that highlights their experiences using activities in social work. These cases will form the basis for collaborative workshops, where students and teachers from different countries will examine the issues from multiple perspectives. Our aim is to illuminate these cases and hopefully generate innovative solutions that reflect a global understanding of social work.

We have prepared a dynamic program that emphasizes cultural engagement and hands-on activities. Participants should come prepared for both indoor and outdoor activities, so bring your good shoes and warm jackets!

Join us in exploring the critical intersection of Activities and Culture in Social Work. Together, we can share knowledge, inspire new ideas, and contribute to the advancement of social work practices across borders.

Hochschule Bremen (HSB) – City University of Applied Sciences

Topic: Social Work and Sustainability – Concepts and Methods for an Ecosocial Future

Internationality enjoys a high priority at HSB – at all levels: from international degree programmes, through exchange and cooperation in research, to strategic projects.

The IUW 2025 in Bremen will focus on the relationship between social work, sustainability, and the needed forms and interventions towards an ecosocial transformation of societies. The current climate crisis challenges us to meet new existential risks on macro, meso, and micro level and to reconsider and reflect lifestyles, forms of consumption, hegemonic models, and global and planetary relationships.

The social work profession needs new concepts, forms, and methods to protect addressees from the impacts of
ecosocial problems, and to create settings for more socio-environmental justice. Beyond this, new models and methods
to reflect and experience the human connection to nature and sustainability are needed.

On a theoretical level, new paradigms for an understanding of the human connection to ecology, well-being and social
embeddedness, and a reflection of the post-humanistic and post-anthropocentric situation are required. On a political level, new forms of inequality arise and a growing resistance of authoritarian counter-movements aims to hinder and discredit the needed transformations needs to be met. Hence, current societies and the social work profession are challenged in manifold ways.

Additional reading material:

Constantine the Philosopher University – Nitra

Topic: TBA

Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra is a modern educational, scientific and artistic institution that bears the name of one of the most important personalities in the history of Nitra and Slovakia – Constantine the Philosopher (St. Cyril, 827 – 869). Its mission is to develop a harmonized personality, spread knowledge, wisdom, honesty and human creativity and contribute to the development of education, culture and health for the benefit of a knowledge-based society. In fulfilling its mission, the main goal of UKF is to provide university education, promote creative scientific research and encourage artistic activities.

St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

Topic: TBA

With almost 4,000 students, the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences is a key player in the Austrian higher education sector and one of the most important employers in the region. 

As a European University, we lead the European University Alliance E³UDRES² (Engaged and Entrepreneurial European University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions) and closely collaborate with universities from Portugal, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, Latvia, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands to create sustainable teaching formats and further develop smart and sustainable regions.