In contemporary social work and social pedagogical research, we are increasingly required to demonstrate impact: to show – often through evidence-based numerical indicators – that our studies generate measurable outcomes. Yet the deeper mission of social work and social pedagogical researchers is to critically analyse the structures that reproduce inequality, to bring forward voices that remain silenced in dominant accounts, and to develop theoretical and empirical insights that sustain forms of solidarity capable of challenging the status quo.
As researchers, this role as ‘agents of change’ risks becoming constrained when impact is defined primarily in managerial or technocratic terms. What is needed is space for a more activist, critical, and imaginative research practice. Research should not only describe social realities; it should also question and unsettle them. It should open new political and conceptual possibilities instead of merely confirming institutional expectations.
This conference invites us to reclaim our role as public intellectuals: as scholars who contribute to public debate, interrogate dominant narratives, and co-produce quantitative and qualitative knowledge in dialogue with communities and with each other. In doing so, we strengthen the transformative potential of social work and social pedagogical research; aligning impact with justice, and linking social change to collective empowerment rather than to compliance.
We welcome contributions that address the role of researchers as possible change agents and to address methodological, ethical and theoretical challenges in conceptualison, realizing, showing and legitimizing social impact.
