The department hosts 10 research groups. Together, the research groups in social work comprise the Social Work Research Unit (FoSo)
CASTOR - Sociological and criminological research on social differentiation and social control
The CASTOR research group focuses on sociological and criminological studies of civil society. The researchers operate with a broad professional palette in the fields of both volunteering, gender, cultural capital, group-related crime, marginalization, social control, identity, radicalization, welfare, migration and transnational crime.
CIW - Center for inclusion and welfare
Center for Inclusion and Welfare (CIW) is a social scientific research center founded broadly in sociological and social work research.
The research focus of the center is the challenges and transformations of welfare and inclusion in terms of new moral and structural foundations, new pressures from migration, globalization and demographic change, changing practices and sectoral divides.
COMA – Center for organization, management and administration
COMA is a cross-departmental center representing a collaboration between Department of Politics and Society & Department of Sociology and Social Work and including members from other departments as well. The objective of the center is to generate cutting edge scientific knowledge about the conditions and opportunities for managing organizational change, innovation and improvement in the public sector from both a local, a national and an international perspective.
Practice Research and Service User Perspective research group
The Practice Research and Service User Perspective research group develops research, processes, understandings and theoretical foundations of practice research and service user perspectives. We test the theoretical foundations in social work practice. Our goal is to develop analysis and new understandings about the service user perspective.
SAGA - Sociological analysis – General and applied research
The purpose of the research group SAGA is to shed light on sociological problems and phenomenons of contemporary society. The research questions of SAGA relate to questions on identity, normality and deviance. The research group embraces micro-sociological research of the everyday life; constructions of identity; meaning and diagnosis of contemporary culture.
SCOPAS - Shaping concepts, practice and advances in social work
The research group focuses on research in the field of welfare and social change. SCOPA's objective is to strengthen knowledge and reflection on social work, thereby contributing to the development of social work. SCOPAS works between the fields of welfare, social problems, the welfare state and social policy.
SocMap - Social Mapping
SocMap conducts research primarily in the fields of urban sociology, social geography and social stratification using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods combined with maps. Thematically, SocMap focuses on the way location matters and how locations are affected by and influence inequality related to e.g. health and education.
SOSA - Social Work in the field of psychiatry and disability
This research group's focus is on the conditions for people in vulnerable and marginal positions due to physical or mental challenges or social pathologies. The living conditions and opportunities shaped in the dialectic relation between the individual, social work, and the overall level of changing institutional structures, political and scientific discourses are presented in the workings of the group.
WISER - Welfare, Innovation, Social Work and Employment Relations
The research group Welfare, Innovation, Social Work and Employment Relations (WISER) focuses on the field of employment policy, and contributes research on labor market policy and political development, on organizational and managerial issues and on professional practice and social work in the field of employment.
Vat no.: 5798000420649 • P numbers; Aalborg: 1012066143, Copenhagen: 1018019139