Ute Karl – Paar-Net

Ute Karl, Grantee of YRI Conference Grant

Bio:

Ute Karl is Professor for Cultural, International and Political dimensions of social work at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences. She is amongst other topics specialised in social work and ageing, cultural work with older adults, critical gerontology, care arrangements and caring democracy, volunteering and civic engagement of older adults, and ageing and migration with a strong emphasise in qualitative methods.

Grant supported actions and initiatives:

The grant facilitated the participation at the European Conference for Social Work Research with the overall subject Embracing Democracy in Social Work Practice and Research at the Katholische Stiftungshochschule in Munich in March 2025. Together with Dr. Marion Scheider-Yilmaz, researcher at the PACTE Laboratory, University of Grenoble Alpes and leader of Working Group 2 “Community and Place”, and Dr. Anne Carolina Ramos, from the University of Fribourg, also in WG 2, we conducted an interdisciplinary and international workshop titled The Role of Participatory Approaches in Strengthening Democracy for Older Adults. The workshop consisted of three parts: 1. Introduction into PAAR-net; 2. Setting the scene with regard to participatory approaches, social work, theoretical models of democracy, power relations and different levels of participation in research. 3. Based on three short case vignettes we work in smaller working groups and discussed different aspects of participation.

Testimonial:

The Workshop at the ECSWR 20205 facilitated a deep exchange on different views on and also challenges in researching in a participatory way. Questions turned around how participation of older adults can be fostered and how can they be empowered to raise their voice in public spaces, how participatory settings may even lead to a deepened feeling of social exclusion in contexts of social exclusion, and how this could be avoided, and if and how the roles of researchers and co-researchers can turn or not, and the impact of power relations. Further aspects were the positionality of the researcher, how empowerment might become a mutual process.

The Conference Grant is a valuable resource for supporting conference contributions even at prestigious and costly conferences to spread innovative ideas of participatory approaches from PAAR-net working groups, to have a deepened knowledge exchange, and to network with other researchers. The insights from the workshop will be published.