Following the success of the “Building Bridges” themed European Conference of Social Work Education (ECSWE) in 2023 in Porto, the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) and the Department of Applied Social Sciences (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences) would like to invite you to contribute to the next ECSWE which is due to be held in Salzburg/Austria in June 2025. The theme for this conference will be “Social Connectedness”.

It is the aim of the conference to investigate the ways in which Social Work Education (SWE) can foster social connectedness as an important pillar for an inclusive, democratic, healthy and (socially) sustainable society.

As connectedness appears to be an indisputably positive aspect of social life, it also needs to be scrutinised critically. All contributors are invited to reflect on the topic, e.g. the “legitimacy” of being socially “disconnected”, especially against the backdrop of neoliberal dominant discourses, reinforced by modern technologies, propagating the regime of permanent “connection”.