Welcome to the Centre for Social Work Innovation and Research (CSWIR)

Located within the School of Education and Social Work, CSWIR has been established to advance the international profile and impact of research and innovative interdisciplinary approaches in social work. Our aim is to bring together social work scholars, professionals, and students, and provide a distinctive ground for research and innovation focusing on the changing nature of social relations of social work and other social action interventions.

As an innovation and research centre, CSWIR aims to:

• promote social justice and rights
• support protection and development of vulnerable populations under new global conditions of austerity and inequality
• strengthen the re-articulation of social work as a distinctive mode of collaborative and participatory relationship-based social action.

In CSWIR, we benefit from cross-disciplinary internal, national, and international collaborations and links, and aim to extend and advance our partnerships with scholarly, professional, and governmental bodies.

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Welcoming our current Visiting Research Fellow!

Dr Chia-Lee Yang (Taiwan's National Center for High Performance Computing) 

Dr. Chia-Lee Yang is a Principal Engineer at Taiwan's National Center for High Performance Computing (NCHC) and an interdisciplinary researcher blending social and computational sciences. Her work focuses on integrating data-driven approaches, including big data mining, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), and machine learning, to delve into public responses to disaster crises like COVID-19 and environmental pollution, with a particular focus on vulnerable populations. Dr. Yang is the principal investigator for several gender and technology research projects funded by Taiwan's NSCT. She played a pivotal role in developing the "COVID-19 Pandemic Map," a widely used open database with over 36 million views, maintained entirely by volunteers. She founded the Women in High-Performance Computing (WHPC) Taiwan chapter. Currently, she is engaged in research on gender and age bias in large language models.

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The Social Work with Older People research project thas just published its findings

The project shadowed social workers in Local Authority adult social care services for 6 months, and interviewed older people, carers and professionals. This was the first comprehensive and detailed look at what social workers do to support older people and the difference they make. 

"The research comprehensively demonstrates the positive impact that social workers can have on older people’s lives, and on unpaid carers and families. However, ageism, lack of investment and pressured services are undermining the potential to promote wellbeing in later life. Simple changes could make a huge difference."

To find out more, visit SWOP's Findings page Research findings – Social Work with Older People Research (wordpress.com) and view their Main Findings report, Summary Report and Policy Briefing.