Elections 2024: Candidate Alxandra Mustafa English

ALXANDRA MUSTAFA

Social Worker UFPE – Brazil (1982); Master in Social WorkUFPE (1992), PhD in Philosophy – Università Pontificia Salesiana di Roma (1999) Post-Doctorate in Sociology at Roma Tre University (2012-2013).

Professor associate IV UFPE. Has been teaching at UFPE, since 1992, as a professor in the area of Fundamentals of Social Work, at undergraduate and graduate level.  Head of the Department of Social Work of UFPE, two administrations, until 2006; Secretary of ABEPSS, from 2006 to 2008; Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Social Work UFPE 2009.  Coordinator of the Study and Research Group on Ethics, since 2000.  Coordinates the Exchange between Brazilian and Italian Social Work, and promotes bilateral agreement between UFPE and UniversitàdegliStudi Roma TRE and Università Milano Bicocca. In 2022 he inaugurated the research in the IASSW ARCHIVES at the University of Minnesota (USA) and is now expanding this research to more researchers worldwide. He is a Large Member of IASSW/AIETS 2020-2024. And is coordinating the International Research Theory and Practice of Social Work in the World in Times of Pandemic, with researchers from 5 countries. She is the editor of the RevistaCadernos GEPE, published in the Portal de Periódicos da UFPE.

The vision statement for Alxandra Mustafa for the IASSW 2024 Election.

My vision statement for the IASSW 2024 Election, for which I am running as a Member at Large, assumes that this is the most important entity that has the challenge of bringing together teaching expressions of Social Work in the world. Therefore, the plural theoretical conceptions, which are encompassed within the IASSW/AIETS, were born within different socio-economic-cultural-political-educational contexts, but all unified by the common bond of concern with the need to eradicate poverty and promote social and economic justice among people. All also united by an institutional force, established globally and regionally, by legally established statutes, make the voice of our profession have greater weight than those voices that lack recognition. Therefore, while IASSW/AIETS is the most strategic institution that the profession has in terms of training professionals who work directly with the masses in need, it also brings together, around itself, the necessary empowerment for Social Service to become a dialoguing subject with a voice and time in the most determining decision-making spaces on the planet, such as governments and international institutions such as the UN, UNICEF, FAO, UNESCO, etc. to suggest directions and proposals that can mitigate pain in the world.

Therefore, it is in my great interest to continue for another term, acting as Member at Large, to deepen the work done so far, and to encourage more and more dialogue between representatives of schools from the most diverse countries. In fact, in the last four years, I can say that we have inaugurated strategic theoretical dialogues with colleagues from many countries, in which crucial issues for our profession can be considered as already being debated. In particular, the complex, but undeniable issue of neoliberalism’s insistence on calling the shots regarding the duty of action by social workers, in every square meter of Planet Earth, when it is a theoretical elaboration adverse to social programs and intended to undermine our professional power and our action with users. I believe that, in the coming years, we can create more conditions to delve deeper into this topic in international dialogues, even aiming to produce a unified voice to defend our theoretical and practical professional autonomy.

Also, and reinforcing what I just said, while I am already engaged in the Research and Training Committees, I consider it to be of great importance that we create, among ourselves, a formative action, from the point of view of scientificity that leads us to produce a knowledge about social action, much more grounded and grounded so that our theoretical expression appears increasingly consistent, in the face of the academic world in general. And that those who, by chance, intend to exclude us from the right to explain the social reality that, from time to time, takes new shape on the world stage, will not find any weak point in our scientific structure to claim as our external “tutors”. : our scientific and inalienable autonomy.

As for the Language Committee, in which I have been participating, and in this area, since I started participating in IASSW/AIETS, I have also been training myself more and more, I consider myself today capable of collaborating with the production of a new international communication methodology, which empowers us, to the point that our theoretical and practical debates become much more dynamic than they have been to date: optimizing our dialogue is possible.

Regarding the enormous amount of archived material, in the IASSW/AIETS Archives, housed in the Elmer Andersen Library, at the University of Minnesota, into which I have already made a first foray, I consider it urgent and imperative that we transform all that rich material, which represents nothing more or less than our identity, as an entity, in a public edition that is easily consultable by all our members, as this is a factor that could greatly strengthen us in the coming years, which are already expected to be highly challenging.

Finally, as we know that it is of great interest to us to increase the number of affiliated schools and members of IASSW/AIETS, I consider that my presence as Member et Large of IASSW/AIETS can be beneficial in this regard, as unified theoretical-scientific -communicatively and intellectually, our image will greatly increase from the point of view of credibility, which is already very significant and this can only be converted into great attractiveness and growth in memberships: good visibility is equal to a geometric increase in attractiveness.

This is my vision statement for the IASSW 2024 Election.