Call for Abstracts
Building Resilient Communities to Promote Equity and Social Inclusion for the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs)
International Social Work and Social Development Conference
16th to 18th June 2025, Makerere University, Kampala Uganda
The Conference seeks to galvanise academic knowledge, debate and critical enquiry and engagements on the topical issues of equity, social justice and inclusion within the
framework of the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while foregrounding practice knowledge as experienced by development actors across the
globe.
The Conference further seeks to enhance local content and scholarship through the applicability of generated knowledge to addressing local and regional development
problems, within the confluence of the greater agenda for social work and social development and its emphasis on social change. This no doubt has ramification for the
application of good practices in social development interventions in other contexts within Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas and contribute to evolution of global
social work/social development practice which promotes contextual specificity and relevance without removing the need for international networking and collaborative
engagement.
This conference comes at the backdrop of the NORAD supported RESILIENT Project, implemented since January 2021 by a consortium comprising the University of Agder
Norway as the lead agency, Makerere University’s Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Rwanda, and the Institute of Social Work,
Tanzania. The project seeks to enhance the participation of the vulnerable and marginalized members of society in the south in the development process itself. For
more details on the conference and the ongoing project please visit the following website: https://resilient.uia.no/about-resilient/.
The RESILIENT PROJECT is now pleased to invite you to submit abstracts to be presented at the International Social Work and Social Development Conference taking
place from 16th to 18th June 2025, at Makerere University, Kampala – Uganda. We are particularly interested in presentations and contributions that reflect perspectives on
social justice, equity and inclusion within the framework of attainment of the SDGs within developing countries.
Conference Justification
The proposed conference is conceptualised within the indigenisation and decolonisation model of social work which seeks to promote social development through culturally and contextually relevant interventions from the grassroots. The major thrust of the indigenisation and decolonisation perspective is based on the notion that the process of social development can only be meaningful and effective if it provides context-specific and tangible responses to the given social problems in a particular local or regional context (whether it be Africa, Asia, Latin America or any other setting). These responses must be related to the socio-cultural realities in that region (Twikirize and Spitzer, 20191). The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 20072) unequivocally recognises that respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment.
The Declaration of the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995 and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, and their successor SDGs in 20153 all call out the need for role players such as social work and social development practitioners to review their strategies in addressing
social injustices, poverty, social exclusion and inequalities. Within this context, social work is well positioned to explore more innovative ways to reach out to the poor and
vulnerable and in doing so contribute more efficiently to addressing social exclusion and social inequality and to directly contribute to the realization of a number of SDGs
(3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 17). Moreover SDG progress monitoring reports seem to suggest that much work needs to be done to attain these targets by 2030 (Halkos and
Gkampura, 20214).
Conference objectives
The conference aims to:
- Bring together social work and social development practitioners, researchers, students, educators and policy makers in order to interact, learn and share each other’ experiences on pertinent social development issues.
- Generate topical resolutions that can be utilised by local and central governments and institutions in the global South and North to further advance the debate/efforts regarding the attainments of SDGs.
Conference Themes
We welcome submission on any of the following themes, broadly conceived:
- Child Wellbeing and Child Protection
- Youth Participation and Inclusion
- Older Persons, Social Protection and Socio-economic Participation
- North-South and South-South Partnership and Collaborations in Social Development
- Green Social Work and Environment
- University and Community Engagement/ Role of Universities in Community Transformation.
- Migration, Refugees and Development
- Civil Society, NGOs, Social Work and Development Practice
- The role of Social Work in Emergencies, Pandemic Crises and Conflict
Conference level
This is an International Conference targeting academics, development practitioners, policy makers, students, researchers and the general public from all continents across
the global North and South. We however strongly encourage participants from the global South and the Africa region to submit abstracts and papers for the conference.
Specific instruction to Authors:
- The abstract submitted should not be more than 250 words
- Nature of presentation: Posters, oral presentations, panels and workshop formats
- All abstracts should be submitted in Microsoft word format
- The font type should be Times New Roman 12pt, 1.5 spacing
- The presenting author should be presented first and underlined
- Indicate the institutional affiliation and the country
- Indicate the Email address of the presenting/corresponding author
- All abstracts should be submitted in English
- Themes of the submission should also be indicated.
- Abstracts can be sent via Email to:
resilientconference2025@mak.ac.ug
copied to ainembabazi.dorynn@gmail.com
Conference Convenor
Prof Eric Awich Ochen
Deputy Principal College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Remore Details in the downloads
