Kick-off Event for PROFRES 2.0 at the University of Stavanger 23-24 May 2022
The kick-off will take place at the University of Stavanger, on Monday 23rd May and Tuesday 24th May 2022.
The programme on Day 1 is an Inspirational Kick-off Symposium open for all to attend. Day 2 is reserved for internal workshops for PROFRES candidates, staff and Scientific Advisory Board.
This kick-off is a celebration of PROFRES 2.0, funded by the Research Council of Norway for the period 2022-2030. The event is our first step towards establishing collective wondering about how we, as an interdisciplinary and interprofessional community of practice-near researchers, can contribute to shaping future welfare.
Thematically, PROFRES 2.0 addresses both current and timeless challenges facing the welfare state. These are challenges often characterized by complexity, contradiction, and uncertainty. Corresponding moral dilemmas and ethical pressures can emerge for professional practitioners within the welfare state, who must negotiate between societal needs and policy makers' ambitions – and the multilayered values and knowledges that guide their relationship-based work with endusers. With increasing needs and demands in the population and more stretched human and economic resources, questions are being asked about the very sustainability of public welfare itself. Added to this backdrop, is the urgency of major global problems like the climate crisis, the covid pandemic and destabilization of international relations and democracies, highlighting our implication in new vulnerabilities, interrelatedness and responsibilities – beyond national borders and the professional practice fields of the welfare state.
In the light of this, we ask: what is the future of welfare, and how can 2.0 contribute to its formation and ethical sustainability? To begin to address these questions will require dreaming, wondering and reflection, as well as new modes of engagement between the research and practice fields. We therefore bring together junior and senior scholars, professional practitioners, social entrepreneurs, educators, leaders and policymakers to co-create around practice-near research over our eight-year project period. In this way, PROFRES 2.0 develops and upholds hope for a progressive welfare future, establishing new arenas for knowledge exchange as vehicles for impact along the way. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you as a participant in this kick-off. It marks the continuation of a well-established collaboration to support and develop PhD candidates through their journeys, as well as being the start of a whole new adventure.