Darja Zaviršek
(University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Professor Darja Zaviršek is Chair of the Department of Social Justice and Inclusion at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Work, and Professor at the Master's programme ‘Social Work as a Human Rights Profession’ at the University of Applied Science Alice Salomon Berlin. She was the Chair of Indosow- International Doctoral Studies in Social Work 2008-2014 and established the ‘Eastern European Sub-Regional Association of Schools of Social Work’ of IASSW in 2009. She is the president of the EEsrASSW and board member of IASSW and a member and mentor of the ‘Southeast European Academic Women's Leadership Initiative’. She was a member of the international teams for the development of social work education at the University of Banja Luka, BIH (2000-2005), Tbilisi State University, Georgia (2006-2012), Pristine University, Kosovo (2006-2010) and Kyiv Mohyla University, Ukraine (1996-2002). She has received several awards and fellowships, including: Honorary Professorship at Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin (2002); Soros Foundation, SEP, Central European University, Senior Fellowship Grant (2005); Hong Kong Polytechnic University Fellowship (2009); Japan Society for the promotion of Science- JPPS Fellowship (2009); Tunghai University Fellowship (2014); Hokenstad Lecture Award, CSWE (2016), Excellency in Science Award, Slovenian Research Agency (2019), Eileen Younghusband Memorial Lecture (2022). Since 2009 she is the member of the ‘Academic Network of Disability Experts’ (now ‘European Disability Experts’) working with the European Commission. Since 2022 she is the chair of the ‘Research Unit for the Social work History’ at the Faculty of Social Work. She is the author, editor, and co-editor of more than 20 books and textbooks and has published over 200 articles in scholarly and professional journals on gender-based violence, disability studies, international adoption and family diversity, and social work history in Eastern Europe and anti-racist social work.