Social work

Social work education, practice and research draw from the .

The discipline of social work at the University of Helsinki is a multilingual research environment for critical and creative research and pedagogy. It builds on national and international collaboration with universities and stakeholders in the Nordic countries and across the world.

A specific emphasis of the discipline is practice research which incorporates the development of social services, producing new knowledge and supporting robust academic teaching. Practice research produces knowledge and methodological skills that benefit society and have practical relevance for work in the social services sector by creating research processes that combine research, social work practical expertise and service user involvement and collaboration. Located within the discipline of social work at the University of Helsinki, aims to produce practice relevant social work research together with various stakeholders and to support the use of research in practice.

Currently research in the discipline focuses on themes such as

• Professional interpersonal skills in social work
• Anti-racist and decolonial social work
• Gerontological social work
• Intersectionality
• Social services for children, youth, families, and child welfare
• LGBTQIA+ expertise in social work and social services
• Linguistic diversity in social work and social services
• Migration and families
• Barriers to accessing services in the social and health care system
• Social work with substance use
• Structural social work
• Social work documentation and record-keeping practices
• Financial social work

• (only in Finnish)
•  (only in Finnish)
• (only in Swedish)
• (only in Finnish)

For more information about research and grant-funded researchers, see

Discipline coordinator: University Lecturer

P.O. Box 54 (Unioninkatu 37)
00014 University of Helsinki