Amman- 17 November 2021

This year’s network meeting of the School of Social Work  was able to take place in person again, for the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19, at the GJU main campus in Madaba. The meeting took place from 14th  to 15th  of November 2021. The host university was represented by Prof. Dr. Ralf Rosskopf, Vice President of GJU,  Prof. Dr. Salah al Salman, Dean at School of Applied Humanities and Languages, Dr. Badir Madi, head of the social work department and Prof. Dr. Christine Hildebrandt, Exchange Coordinator of SAHL. They were further joined by Iris Wildfeuer, network coordinator from the International Office and two members of the GJU Project Office in Magdeburg, Julia Kölbel and Franziska Kaiser.

Travelling to Jordan as guests of the meeting were Dr. Jochen Pleines the GJU Network Head for the  Social Work network, accompanied by his successor in the role,  Dr. Sigrid James from the University of Kassel and Dr. Eva Gerharz from HS Fulda.

The different German partner universities such as Neubrandenburg UAS, HS Fulda and UAS Würzburg-Schweinfurt were represented online since a hybrid session was made possible through the use of one of the digital classrooms at GJU.

After some welcome words by GJU and a general introduction of the participants, moderated by Dr. Jochen Pleines, Prof. Dr. Ralf Rosskopf opened the meeting with an update on the developments GJU had undergone during the pandemic. This was followed by an update on department level by exchange coordinator Prof. Dr. Christine Hildebrandt, which included information about the German accreditation of the Master Program, the Bachelor program set to start in 2022 and the planned research cluster. Different possibilities for collaboration in research and teaching were discussed.

Two current research projects by PHD candidates Norina Fischer and Majd Zaghlan  were presented, followed by presentations of collaborative projects such as "Transnational Governance and Human  Rights - HAW International" by Dr. Eva Gerharz (HS Fulda) and presentations by Prof. Dr. Sahar Al-Makhamreh (Project in collaboration with Caritas) and Prof. Dr. Christine Hildebrandt (AttiMa- Project).

On the second day the network members joined the proceedings of the “GJU German Week” in the morning and moved on to a wrap-up of the network meeting of the Social Work department in the afternoon. The network assured its support in the developments taking place in the department. The outcome of the meeting demonstrated new possibilities for collaboration and was characterized by a general feeling of evolution in the cooperation between the department and the network members.