Prof. Dr. Sabine Andresen is a professor of Social Work and Family Research at Frankfurt University. From 2004 to 2011 Sabine Andresen was employed full-time as a professor of General Education at Bielefeld University, Germany, and since April 2011 she has been at Frankfurt University as a Research Professor of Social Work and Family Research (full-time). In Frankfurt, she is a researcher at the Loewe Center for “Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk”. Prior to returning to Bielefeld University in 2004, she worked as a researcher at Zurich University (Switzerland) and at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). In Germany, she is a recognized expert on childhood and youth and family research. One main focus of her research is the well-being of children from an international perspective alongside threats to childhood posed by poverty, sexual abuse and precarious life situations. Since 2009 she is a scientific board member of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) and since 2010 she is a member of the committee of experts of the Federal Ministry of Families, Senior Citizens, Woman, and Youth, Germany. Since 2011 she is a Scientific Board Member of the DJI, Munich (German Youth Institute) and the IKG, Bielefeld (Interdisciplinary Centre for Research on Conflict and Violence). She is involved in national and international cooperation.

Dr. Carme Montserrat, PhD, is a deputy dean in the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Girona (Spain). She is a tenured professor at this Faculty since 2006, teaching at the degrees of Psychology and Social Education, and also at different master’s, post-degree and doctoral programs. She is also a researcher in the Research Team on Childhood, Adolescence, Children’s rights and their Quality of Life within the Research Institute for Quality of Life (IRQV) at the University. She acquired her PhD in 2006 from the University of Girona, having previously worked in the child protection system in the city of Barcelona as well as being a consultant with the Council of Europe regarding the issue of violence against children. Her main areas of research are related to children and young people in social services and public care using quantitative and qualitative methodology. She has authored and co-authored some books and chapters and has published several papers in prestigious national and international journals and as well as communications presented at national and international conferences. She is a member of the International Association of Outcome-Based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children’s Services (iaOBER).

Prof. Fabian Kessl, PhD, is a professor for social work with a focus on social policy at the University of Wuppertal, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Wuppertal, Germany. Before he worked from 2008 until 2018 as a professor for social work theories and methods at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Social Work and Social Policy. His PhD has been on a governmentality of social work (published in 2005). His teaching is focused on theories and policy studies in social work and on questions of education in non-schooling areas such as child and youth welfare. The current research interests of Fabian Kessl are in the area of the transformation of the welfare state and welfare state agencies, especially due to the dimensions of scale (spatial aspects), the everyday life of service users and the institutional change of public services in general. He was responsible for a number of research projects on specific aspects of residential child care, focussing on closed institutions questions, family-like structures and staff violence. Fabian Kessl is the Managing Director of “Social Work & Society”, and a member of several editorial boards (e.g. Critical Social Policy). Since 2014 Fabian Kessl is part of the executive board of the German Association of Educational Science (DGfE). He edited international special issues at the European Journal of Social Work (EJSW) and Social Work & Society (SW&S) on Knowledge Transfer in Social Work (2015), or Boundary Work (2012), and is editing currently the” European Social Work – Compendi­um” (together with Walter Lorenz, Hans-Uwe Otto and Sue White) at Barbara Budrich Publisher (Farmington Hills, 2017, in print).

Dr. Lucienne Monique Van Erwegen (PhD) obtained a Doctorate in childhood studies at Queen University in Belfast this year. She has been working with children and vulnerable groups for more than two decades in different capacities. She started her career studying speech therapy at “De vlaamse hogeschool voor vrouwen” in Antwerp in Belgium. In 1982 she obtained a degree in dramatic arts and she worked with children at “Het Mechels Miniatuur Theater” raising awareness for social inclusion before moving to Ireland in 1999. In the Republic of Ireland she managed several services for young people in out of home care, people with mental health problems and people with learning difficulties. Simultaneously she obtained a postgraduate (M) in working with people with autism at the University of Birmingham in 2004, and a postgraduate (M) in child protection and welfare at Trinity college in Dublin in 2008. Her main interest is in researching resilience in young people, and developing methods to have young people included who are often ignored. The social inclusion debate is high on her agenda. She presented at several International conferences. She is a member of the Sensory Integration Network. 

Dr. Dafna Tener, PhD, is a faculty member at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has studied child sexual abuse for the past 9 years and has conducted numerous research projects focusing on survivors’, families’ and professionals’ perceptions of sexual abuse. In 2012-2013 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Crimes Against Children Research Center supervised by Professor David Finkelhor. Since 2013 she has specialized in qualitative research methods as well as mixed methods. Dr. Tener is a research fellow at the Haruv institute, a training and research center in the field of child maltreatment.

Gemma Crous is a Doctor in Psychology, health and quality of life from the University of Girona (Catalonia). Her background is in Psychology (BA) and in Youth and Society (MA). While still an undergraduate, in 2013 she joined the ERIDIQV research team (http://www.udg.edu/eridiqv). During more than 5 years, Gemma has been participating as a research assistant in several projects within the team, some competitive projects and other ones about transference of knowledge. In 2015 she received funding from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and the European Social Fund to do her PhD. Her areas of expertise and interest are social exclusion, child subjective and eudaimonic well-being, children’s rights, youth policies and youth transitioning out of care. She has a few publications in impact factor journals and she has been participating as a co-author in a book.

Luciana Cassarino-Perez is a Doctor in Psychology from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), with background (BA and MA) in Psychology. Since 2015 she has been part of the GPPC (https://www.ufrgs.br/gppc/) research team, collaborating in substantial research and intervention programs on Brazilian children rights and their subjective well-being. In 2016-2017, she was a short-term fellow at the University of Catalonia, collaborating with studies conducted by Professor Carme Montserrat at the ERIDIQV (http://www.udg.edu/eridiqv) research team. Her main areas of interest are related to positive development of children and adolescents within the child welfare system. Using mixed methods research, Dr. Cassarino-Perez has offered visibility and advocate for the rights of young people aging out of Brazilian child protection system. She has also published in impact factor journals and participated as co-author in books. Currently she is the director of academic affairs for the Psychology Bachelor at Faculdades Telêmaco Borba (Brazil).

Dr. Maksim Hübenthal is a tenured research associate at the Department of Education and Psychology, Social Work Division (Social Pedagogy) of the Freie Universität in Berlin. He studied Educational Science at the University of Halle, where he later worked for several years (2008-16) as a research assistant at the Chair of Social Work and Social Policy Research. During this time he obtained his PhD (2015) with a ‘Grounded Theory’ analysis of the different social constructions of child poverty in the German political field. Before he came to Berlin in 2016 he was Interim Professor for Childhood Research at the University of Wuppertal during the winter semester of 2015-16. Rooted in the ‘new sociology of childhood’ and based at the intersection of educational science and sociology, his recent main field of expertise has been child poverty. He also publishes and gives presentations at national and international level on topics such as early childhood education and care, children’s rights, and child participation. Currently he is focusing on the paradoxes and ambivalences of contemporary childhood.