Call for papers for the Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria: "Addressing violence and its consequences while incorporating different perspectives".

Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria

(Rivista di Fascia A settore 11D1)  

Addressing violence and its consequences while incorporating different perspectives. For the negotiation of responsibility within complex social processes.

Call for Papers – Volume No. 10, 2028 – Abstract Deadline: 26 June 2026

The Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria (OeJS) invites expressions of interest for its 2028 issue. We welcome abstracts for (a) general contributions and (b) contributions on the main theme of the issue. We also accept proposals for (c) book reviews (details below). The publication will be in German and English. The Annual Review is a fully open-access journal that meets an interna-tional double-blind peer review standard. Past issues of the OeJS are available to read in full with open access on our editorial office web page and on the review web page under the Beltz Juventa publishing imprint.

Main Topic:

Addressing violence and its consequences while incorporating different per-spectives. For the negotiation of responsibility within complex social pro-cesses (working title)

For some years now, there has been an intensive debate in the professional discourse of social work and in the public about (sexualized) violence in institutions: Survivors themselves were the first ones to bring their experiences of violence into the public and professional discourse with great effort, de-spite much resistance, and often accompanied by shame and stigmatization (e.g. Dehmers, 2011; Schlingmann, 2015). They continue this work to this day. These efforts were followed by (insufficient) attempts to not reduce justice-seeking to financial reparations. The aim was to create formats of being heard, to enable the recognition of harm and injustice both individually and collectively, to expand communicative memory (Loch 202), and to create the basis for violence-preventive institutional cul-tures (Caspari, 2021). These debates led, among other things, to the establishment of violence-preven-tion concepts in social and educational organisations, increased awareness of epistemic violence, and the quest for equitable models for engaging survivors at various levels of societal accountability.

Processes of working through violence are profoundly challenging! Disclosure of violence currently takes place in the tension between changing opportunities for social participation, especially for peo-ple with violence experiences, and persistent cultures of power that continue to shape the dynamics of tabooing violence, secret management and abuse of power. In many cases, this goes hand in hand with the restriction and questioning of the voices of people who have experienced violence. Under these conditions, disclosure requires creating spaces to talk about the harm caused by violence, a will-ingness to listen to what is said, and the recognition of survivors' knowledge as a basis for institutional and social responsibility.

So far, there is limited knowledge of how the results of healing and reckoning are further processed (cf. Mehrick 2026) and of the consequences for institutions, professions, and survivors. In many cases, it also remains unclear how dynamics of disclosure and concealment affect professional, organiza-tional, and social developments in the long term.

Against this background, we invite scholarly contributions, including joint contributions by researchers (with and without lived experiences of violence) and survivors involved in healing processes, as well as narratives of personal experiences.

Possible questions are:

• What power relations are evident in the healing process? What perspectives, interests, and goals are associated with accountability and reckoning? How are these concretely experi-enced on a personal level?

• To what extent are survivors involved in processes of coming to terms with the past, and what experiences do they have in the field of tension between recognition and renewed marginalization?

• How is the (professional) public dealing with the results of disclosure and healing, and what dynamics of visibility and renewed concealment, defamation, delegitimization, (legal) threats, or institutional pressure can be observed?

• To what extent do processes of disclosure and justice-seeking come under criminal scrutiny (police, public prosecutor's investigations), and how do involved organisations react to re-sulting conflicts, support needs and protection requirements?

• What understandings of responsibility emerge during cooperative recovery work?

• What concepts and methodological foundations of healing and justice work are there, and to what extent do they consider dynamics of disclosure and concealment?

In addition, we are happy to receive contributions that (a) present cross-contextual empirical findings from research projects, (b) make theoretical and conceptual considerations, or (c) describe and dis-cuss historical or current developments in various fields of social work. Additionally, we welcome ex-periential narratives regarding individual areas mentioned in the call. These testimonials are not sub-ject to a peer review process and may be published under a pseudonym if necessary.

Organisational aspects

In addition to pieces examining developments in Austria, this call for papers also welcomes contribu-tions on the main theme in English or German focusing on international developments and featuring comparative approaches. Both, general contributions and those on the main theme may be up to 50,000 characters in length (including spaces and bibliography). Up to 10,000 characters are planned for book reviews. Guidelines for submitting manuscripts can be found at: www.uni-salzburg.at/oejs (set the language to English).

The deadline for submitting abstracts in either German or English (3,000 to 4,000 characters) is 26 June 2026. Feedback on the abstracts – i.e. their acceptance or rejection – will be provided by the editors by end of July 2026. Authors are to submit their full articles by 15 January 2027. Please send abstracts to the editors: oejs@plus.ac.at.

Editors of the 2028 issue: Petra Bauer (University of Tübingen), Birgit Bütow (University of Salzburg), Helena Kliche (University of Klagenfurt), Ulrike Loch (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), Max Mehrick, Elli Scambor (Institute for Masculinity Research and Gender Studies/VMG Graz) and Malte Täubrich (Dissens Berlin).