Decolonising Social Work Education

In a world gripped by intersecting crises and deepening inequalities, can social work break free from its colonial entanglements to imagine a more just and compassionate future? Decolonising Social Work Education: Memory, Haunting and Critical Hope in the Nordics confronts the enduring legacies of colonialism that continue to shape the foundations of social work education. Through the lenses of haunting, memory, and critical hope, it challenges the discipline's historical complicity with systems of domination and calls for a radical reimagining of its pedagogical core. Grounded in pluriversal knowledges and informed by decolonial thought, this book advocates for a transformative, relational curriculum-one that resists neoliberalism, carceral logics, and epistemic injustice. Drawing on examples from the Nordic context, it offers a bold vision for social work rooted in justice, equity, and ecological interconnectedness. With humility, reflection, and collective imagination, it charts a path towards a liberatory future where social work becomes a force for healing and transformation.

Kris Clarke is Professor of Social Work at the University of Helsinki. Originally from Fresno, California, Clarke has worked in Finland for over 25 years. Her research interests centre on decolonisation, LGBTQ+ issues, structural social work, and abolitionist perspectives on social work. Michael Wallengren-Lynch is a social work academic and former practitioner. Qualifying as a social worker in 2004, he has worked in New Zealand, Ireland, Pakistan, and Sweden. He currently teaches at Malmö University, Sweden. His research focuses on school-based social work, crisis and disaster management, and critical pedagogical approaches in social work education. Michael Yellow Bird is Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba. He is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota, USA. He has held faculty and administrative positions in social work and Indigenous studies at universities in the United States and Canada. His research and publications focus on colonisation, decolonisation, neuroscience and Indigenous Peoples, healthy Indigenous ageing, mindfulness, Arikara traditional agriculture, and the cultural significance of Rez dogs.

1.Positioning and dismantling. 2.Interconnectedness: A sacred curriculum of life. 3.Troubling ways of knowing and remembering. 4.The haunting of plantation logics in social work education. 5.Haunted histories and contested futures. 6.Towards decolonising the social work curriculum. 7.Towards a decolonial praxis of critical hope through engaged pedagogy. 8.Pedagogy, positionality and decolonialism.