Welfare State Transformation Since 1970: Comparative International Perspectives
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Ellen Bareis, PhD
Ellen Bareis is Social Scientist at the Institute for Urban and Regional Development, University of Applied Sciences Frankfurt am Main. Ms. Bareis is the 2004-2007 Scientific Assistant at the Institute for Social Pedagogy and Adult Education Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and the 2001-2004 scholar of Heinrich-Böll-Foundation. Ms. Bareis’s research focuses on the transformations of the everyday life and social strife in the urban environment and the social and organizational aspects of social policy.
Adrienne S. Chambon, PhD
Adrienne S. Chambon is Professor at the University of Toronto, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, and Director of its PhD Program. Her scholarship focuses on articulating the links between micro and macro-levels of the discipline: ‘self,’ ‘institution,’ and the broader socio-cultural context. She has written on the transformation of narratives and discourses prevalent in social work. She co-edited Essays on Post-Modernism and Social Work with Allan Irving; and Reading Foucault for Social Work (Columbia University Press, 1999) with Allan Irving and Laura Epstein. Expanding upon her interest in interdisciplinary theorizing, she has been the Principal Investigator for two projects funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) on “The Heuristics of Art Practices for Social Work;” followed by the present project: “Knowledge for Solidarity: A Critical Cultural Theory for Social Work” conducted in collaboration with economist and policy researcher Ernie Lightman and artist Vera Frenkel.
John Clarke, PhD
John Clarke is a Professor of Social Policy in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University in the United Kingdom. His research and writing has explored the political and discursive struggles involved in remaking the relationships between people, welfare and states. He has had a specific interest in the roles that managerialism and consumerism have played in these changes. These issues have inspired a series of books: Changing Welfare, Changing States: New Directions in Social Policy (Sage, 2004); Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Publics and Changing Public Services (in collaboration with Janet Newman, Nick Smith, Elizabeth Vidler and Louise Westmarland, Sage, 2007); and, most recently Publics, Politics and Power: Remaking the Public in Public Services, co-authored with Janet Newman (Sage, 2009).
Barbara Cruikshank, PhD
Barbara Cruikshank is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Cornell UP 1999) and assorted essays on welfare, feminist and democratic theory, and the history of political thought. Her current research is on reform and contingency, for a book provisionally titled Neopolitics: Reform, Contingency and Activism.
Volker Eick, PhD
Volker Eick is a Political Scientist in the Department of Politics, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin. His research endeavours are urban security regimes, commercialization of security, workfare, (new) social movements, and local governance. Recent publications appeared in: Helga Leitner et al. (eds.), Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers (Guilford Press, 2007); Volker Eick et al. (eds.): Kontrollierte Urbanität. Zur Neoliberalisierung städtischer Sicherheitspolitik (transkript, 2007); Nikolaus Dimmel, Josef Schmee (eds.), Die Gewalt des neoliberalen Staates. Vom fordistischen Wohlfahrtsstaat zum repressiven Überwachungsstaat (UKV, 2008); Taoufik Djebali (ed.), Marginalité et Politiques Sociales: Réflexions Autour de l’Exemple Américain (Caen Universite, 2009). He is currently finishing his PhD dissertation, “New Security Concepts within the Changing Welfare State: Communal Crime Policy between Commercialization and Community.” He works as well as a consultant and representative for the German Service Union (ver.di) in the field of private security in Eastern Europe and Germany.
Robert Fairbanks, II, PhD
Robert Fairbanks is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration (SSA). His fields of interest include urban ethnography, urban studies, welfare state theory, and critical social policy analysis. At SSA, Mr. Fairbanks teaches courses on urban poverty, the political economy of urban development, and the history and philosophy of the welfare state. His research focuses on the ways in which informal poverty survival mechanisms articulate with the restructuring of the contemporary welfare state and the political economy of cities. Mr. Fairbanks´s current book, “How it Works: Recovering Citizens in Post-Welfare Philadelphia” (forthcoming University of Chicago Press, 2009), is an ethnographic project that examines how unlicensed, unregulated drug and alcohol recovery houses operate as street-level anti-poverty strategies and mechanisms of governmentality in postindustrial Philadelphia. He is also working on a co-edited project titled, “Critical ethnography in the neoliberal city” which will first appear as a special issue of Ethnography. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, Mr. Fairbanks served as an instructor in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. He also taught an undergraduate seminar on urban poverty in the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Fairbanks received a BA in English from Boston College, an MSW from the University of Vermont, and a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Bob Jessop, PhD
Bob Jessop is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Lancaster University, England. His main research interests comprise state theory, critical political economy, the philosophy of social sciences, welfare regimes, and the knowledge-based economy. His principal publications include The Capitalist State (1982), Nicos Poulantzas (1985), Thatcherism: a Tale of Two Nations (1988), State Theory (1990), The Future of the Capitalist State (2002), Beyond the Regulation Approach (2006, co-authored with Dr Ngai-Ling Sum), and State Power: a Strategic-Relational Approach (2007). He has also published more than 90 journal articles, 140 book chapters, and been translated from English into 19 other languages. His current research concerns the cultural political economy of financial crisis and its repercussions in the world market, inter-state system, and world society. He currently co-directs the Cultural Political Economy Research Centre at Lancaster University with Professor Ngai-Ling Sum.
Fabian Kessl, PhD
Fabian Kessl is Professor for Theory and Practice of Social Work at the School of Social Work, University Duisburg-Essen (Germany). His basic interest is in the current transformation of welfare and quasi-welfare arrangements since the 1970s. In particular Mr. Kessl is interested in the “New Forms of Governance”, the Governmentality of Social Work, the Spatial Formation-Shifts of Social Policy, and Neo-Social Patterns of Life Conduct. This work has been developed through a number of books and edited volumes. Recent published works include: De- and Reterritorialization of the Social (Special Issue for Social Work & Society, edited with John Clarke, 2008/forthcoming); European Handbook for Social Work (edited with Walter Lorenz, Hans-Uwe Otto, forthcoming 2009); and Territorialisierung des Sozialen (edited with Hans-Uwe Otto, 2007). Professor Kessl was Co-Director of three major international conferences in 2002, 2006 and 2008. He is member of the Editorial Board of two leading German Journals in Social Work and Social Policy (Neue Praxis and Widersprüche) and member of the Co-Ordinating Office of “Social Work & Society – Online-Journal for Social Work and Social Policy” (www.socwork.net). Since March of 2008, Mr. Kessl has served as a member of the steering committee for the German Association for Educational Science (DGfE) Division of “Social Work”. Prior to coming to the University of Duisburg-Essen, Mr. Kessl taught at the Centre for Social Service Studies, Bielefeld University. He received his Diploma in Educational and Political Science at the Heidelberg University, and his PhD at Bielefeld University. In 2007 he was invited as a Visiting Scholar by the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Gregory Martson, PhD
Gregory Marston is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Social Policy Unit at the University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests focus on the intersection of social change and social policy. Recent research projects have been concerned with activation polices and unemployment in western welfare states and the role of the fringe economy in the lives of people on low-incomes. He is the author of Social Policy and Discourse Analysis (2004, Ashgate Publishing) and co-editor of Analyzing Social Policy: A Governmental Approach (2006, Edward Elgar Publishing).
Margit Mayer, PhD
Margit Mayer teaches comparative and North American politics at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Her research focuses on comparative politics, urban and social politics and social movements. She has been editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and has published on various aspects of contemporary urban politics and social and employment policy. Her work has focused on, among other topics, local state theory, urban social movements and the restructuring of public/private relations in contemporary metropolitan centers. She has also written on the restructuring of local welfare state regimes in comparative perspective (with particular reference to Western Europe and the USA). She directed a DFG-funded research project comparing third sector groups in Berlin and Los Angeles, and currently she is working on a book on urban social movements to be published with Blackwell.
Catherine McDonald, PhD
Catherine McDonald is Professor of Social Work at RMIT University in Melbourne. Her research interests and publication areas are: poverty and disadvantage; the non-profit sector and the mixed economy of welfare; welfare to workfare; the functioning of service delivery systems, social policies and welfare reform on vulnerable people. She has a practice background in social policy and has a long standing involvement in policy activism. She has taught social work and human services work for twenty five years, developed a wide range of courses and programs at undergraduate and post graduate level, and has also successfully supervised a number of research higher degree students to completion. She has a long standing involvement with the nongovernment welfare sector and is currently a board member of Good Shepherd Child and Family Services.
Aihwa Ong, PhD
Aihwa Ong is Professor of Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a leading anthropologist of trans-Pacific cultural connections and change. Her research focuses on techno-ethical assemblages, sovereignty and citizenship in emerging Asian situations. Ms. Ong is the author of the now classic Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (1987); Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (1999); Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (2003); and Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (2006). Ms. Ong Co-edited volumes include Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (2005); and Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar (2008). Currently, Ms. Ong is investigating biotech regimes and world cities in Asia. Her writings have been translated into German, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese. Widely recognized for her innovative, interdisciplinary and transnational research, Ms. Ong has spoken at many international meetings, including the World Economic Forum.
Jamie Peck, PhD
Jamie Peck is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His publications include Work-place (1996), Workfare States (2001), Contesting Neoliberalism (2007) (coedited with Leitner and Sheppard), Politics and Practice in Economic Geography (2007) (coedited with Tickell, Barnes and Sheppard), and more than 150 journal articles and book chapters on issues including labor-market policy, neoliberalization, economic regulation and governance, and urban restructuring. The recipient of Guggehneim and Harkeness fellowships, Mr. Peck has held visiting positions at the University of Melbourne, Johns Hopkins University, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Oslo, University of Nottingham, Queen’s University, Belfast. A Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, he was previously Professor of Geography & Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester.
Philipp Sandermann, PhD
Philipp Sandermann is a Research Associate at the Social Work area of the Free University of Berlin. His research interests include the theory and empiricism of the welfare system, particularly the system in Germany, the theoretical discussion in social work, social orientation in youth, and representation of stakeholders in youth. From 2006-2007 Mr. Sandermann was a promo vent and lecturer on the social work field at the Free University of Berlin and staff of the Berlin Youth Mutual Fund (FRY). His most recent publication is Sandermann, Philipp (2009): “The New Discussion about Community. An Explanation with a View to Reforming the Welfare System.” Mr. Sandermann received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 2008, and the title of his dissertation thesis is, “New Community Discussion and West German Welfare System. An Ideology-critical System Theoretical Explanation.”
William Sites, PhD
William Sites is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. His fields of interest include urban studies, community organization, politics and the welfare state, movements and social theory. Recent journal publications include “Beyond Trenches and Grassroots? Reflections on Urban Mobilization, Fragmentation, and the Anti-Wal-Mart Campaign in Chicago” in Environment and Planning A; and “Contesting the Neoliberal City? Theories of Neoliberalism and Urban Strategies of Contention” in H. Leitner, J. Peck and E. Sheppard (eds.), Contesting Neoliberalism: The Urban Frontier. His book-length study of the transformation of New York City, issued as part of the Globalization and Community series by the University of Minnesota Press, is titled Remaking New York: Primitive Globalization and the Politics of Urban Community.
Ngai-Ling Sum, PhD
Ngai-Ling Sum is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations in Lancaster University. She has research interests in regulation approach and cultural political economy and their application to East Asian newly-industrializing countries, the cross-border regions of Pearl River Delta, corporate social responsibility and global retail chains. She is the winner (with Bob Jessop) of the Gunnar Myrdal Prize of the European Association of the Evolutionary Political Economic (EAEPE) (best political economy book published in 2006). More recently, she was awarded a grant to organize an ESRC seminar series on ‘Changing Cultures of Competitiveness’ in 2007 and in 2008 obtained a British Academy Research Development Award (BARDA) to develop this project through a comparison of the Pearl River Delta and India. She has published in Capital and Class, Economy and Society, Critical Asian Studies, New Political Economy, Urban Studies, Competition and Change, and Development Dialogue.
Nik Theodore, PhD
Nik Theodore is the Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development and Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Prior to joining UIC, he was a 1997-98 Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy based at Manchester University (UK) and Project Director in the Chicago Urban League’s Research & Planning Department (1988-97). His current research on welfare state restructuring examines the transfer of welfare policies across international borders. Along with Jamie Peck of the University of British Columbia, he is leading a project funded by the Ford Foundation to track the movement of conditional cash transfer programs throughout the global south. He has published articles on welfare-to-work and policy transfer in Political Geography, Policy & Politics, Critical Social Policy, and Cambridge Journal of Economics.
