Dissenting

Social

Work

Biography

Paul Michael Garrett is a social work educator and writer based in Ireland. His work enjoys far-reaching international recognition and he has been described by the International Journal of Social Welfare, as ‘probably the most important critical social work theorist in the English-speaking world’. He has undertaken visiting professorships in China (East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 2017) and the US (City University of New York, 2018). Moreover, his Social Work and Social Theory (Policy Press, 2013) has been translated into Chinese and is a standard text on social work courses there. He has also presented numerous keynote papers at esteemed international conferences in France, Italy, UK, Norway, Belgium and Germany.

As a Leftist public intellectual, his scholarly interventions and social activism are frequently interconnected and for two decades he has been a member of the Critical Social Policy Collective [ https://journals.sagepub.com/aims-scope/CSP ]. His most recent books include: Welfare Words: Critical Social Work and Social Policy (Sage, 2018), Dissenting Social Work: Critical Theory, Resistance and Pandemic (Routledge, 2021), Social Work with the Black African Diaspora co-authored with Washington Marovatsanga (Policy Press, 2022), Social Work and Common Sense: A Critical Examination (Routledge, 2024).

He was elected to the prestigious Royal Irish Academy in 2020. Moreover, he has three PhDs; from the University of Nottingham (2022), the National University of Ireland (a Higher Doctorate, 2020) and the Ghent University (an Honorary Doctorate, 2024). He is also featured on a survey on the ‘top 100 most impactful global contributors to social work journal scholarship’. Garrett is the only Irish based scholar on the list and is one of the sixth highest ranked social work scholars in all Europe. (Hodge and Turner, 2023).

Paul worked for many years as a social work practitioner, before becoming a full-time scholar in 1999. He was based at the University of Nottingham for five years and then – in 2004 – he took up his current position at (what is now) the University of Galway. In this capacity he helped set up the first social work teaching programme in the west of Ireland in the state’s history. He also led the team that achieved the initial accreditation for the MA in Social Work programme. He teaches on postgraduate and undergraduate programmes and has supervised students at MA thesis and PhD levels. In mentoring students, he has also gone on to jointly publish books and articles with them. In addition, he has been the External Examiner for PhD theses in many parts of the world.

What is

Dissenting Social Work?

Drawing on critical social theory and habits of self-questioning, Dissenting Social Work (DSW) is an approach that interrogates dominant ways of understanding the social world within the discipline of social work. As a Leftist form of neo-social work, DSW pushes back against moves to limit the field of possibilities for educators and practitioners. In starker terms, DSW contests the idea that educators and practitioners ought to serve as mere handmaidens or functional auxiliaries of capitalism and the institutional orders that it requires. DSW, cannot be articulated along the lines of ‘blueprints’ or ‘action plans’, but it might be provisionally perceived as operating within a space patterned by, at least, a dozen themes, even commitments.