Ian Shaw

Personal web page: https://www.york.ac.uk/spsw/staff/emeritus-and-honorary/ian-shaw/#tab-1

I have been working in a university most of my career, after five years working as a probation officer. My later interests within social work and social science focus on several themes:

• The practice/research relationship
• Understanding the nature of social work as an applied social science both in its own right and in relation to disciplines like sociology
• Qualitative research and evaluation methodology, practitioner and action research
• Developing social work research strategies
• Technology and professional practice
• The history of social work research in the USA and Europe
• Social Work within Asian nation states.

My first degree was in sociology, and it has continued to influence my social work practice and, subsequently, my university work. I followed my first degree with social work training in South Wales, before returning to Sheffield in the north of England to work as a Probation Officer for five years. I arrived in York as Professor of Social Work in Spring 2003, following a long career in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. I am now Emeritus at York, continuing with several research and writing projects. I worked full-time from 2017 to 2019 as S R Nathan Professor of Social Work in the Social Work Department at the National University of Singapore, and will be returning there in 2021.

Much of my teaching has been at the borders of practice and research, including qualitative methods, dissertation and thesis skills, and evidence and knowledge for practice. I have aimed, in addition, to develop a view of professional practice in social work that embeds an evaluative dimension as part and parcel of good direct practice. I have also taught social work practice through eLearning, utilizing packages for which I took the lead developer role. My current teaching is around Social Theory and Social Work and Qualitative Methods.

In 2020 I completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing and have published a number of poems.

Areas of expertise

• Practice/research relationship
• Qualitative methods
• Evaluation
• History of social work and sociology
• Science and social work
• Creative writing

Professional activities

• Founder Editor of Qualitative Social Work
• Founder European Conference for Social Work Research
• Founder Chair and then Vice Chair of the European Social Work Research Association
• S. R. Nathan Professor of Social Work, National University of Singapore, Summer 2016-2019; and from August 2021
• Co-Editor of Policy Press book series for ESWRA, ‘Research and Social Work' 2016-2019

Research Interests

My research work has never been narrowly focused on social work, but has been at the interfaces with especially sociology, but also social policy, health studies, education and housing. However, I think that a focus on social work research provides an invaluable gateway to several core issues – joined-up policy, professional decision making, evidence based practice, theorizing practice, involving service users in public sector services, transdisciplinary research, the role of the university in society, the meaning of 'science' in professional work, and so on. My recent research projects include:

1. A case study of research networks in social work.
2. Archival research on the history of social work and sociology in the USA.
3. A preliminary historical study of the relationship between sociology and social work in the UK.
4. History of The British Journal of Social Work.
5. Research networks in social work.
6. An archival project on the development of social work in post-war Singapore, in the context of colonialism, the role of women, war and the forming of disciplinary fields.

Almost all of my writing includes attention to the questions raised by the process and action of research. My latest books include Doing Qualitative Research in Social Work (Sage Publications, 2014. With Sally Holland), Social Work and Science (Columbia University Press, 2015) and a four volume 'Major Work' collection for Sage Publications (2015), consisting of what we (Jeanne Marsh at Chicago, Mark Hardy at York and myself) judge to be among the most significant papers ever published in or for social work research. However, most of my writing does not address the specifics of research methods but how such research finds identify with disciplinary (e.g. Shaw, 2018) and nation-state (e.g. Shaw and Ow, 2020) contexts.

I have strong national and international network relationships, expressed primarily through taking the lead in developing the successful European Conference for Social Work Research and the launch in 2014 of the European Social Work Research Association, which I chaired for the first year. I am invited often to speak in and visit other countries – recently these have included Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Israel, Portugal, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Publications

Jobling, H. and Shaw, I. 2021. ‘The worlds of social work writing.’ European Journal of Social Work. 24 (3): 515-526

Shaw, I. 2021. ‘This’ and ‘Circle of Light.’ Poems. Qualitative Social Work 20 (1-2): 36-40.

Shaw, I. 2021. ‘Social Work and Sociology/Sociology and Social Work: Peering Back and Forth.’ Qualitative Social Work 20 (5): 1184–1203

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘When walking on a slow ascending street.’ Poem. Consilience Issue 3  When Walking on a Slow Ascending Street — Consilience (consilience-journal.com)

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘Times Present, Times Past: the History of Social Work Research in the United Kingdom.’ Bulletin of the Social Work History Network 7 (1): 30-43.

Shaw, I. and Norton, M. 2008. ‘Kinds and quality of social work research’ Br Journal of Social Work 38 (5): 953-970. Republished in the 50th Anniversary Virtual Issue. Celebrating 50 years of BJSW and BASW. October 2020. https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/pages/50th-anniversary#d018c1fff5dbba54c6b1

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘Practice Research as a collective enterprise.’ In Joubert, L and Webber, M. Eds. Routledge Handbook of Social Work Practice Research. London: Routledge.

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘Chicago Pastoral 1931.’ Poem. Qualitative Social Work. 19(5–6) 789–791

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘The nature and disposition of a traditional network: a paradoxical case.’ European Journal of Social Work, 23:4, 606-621. doi.10.1080/13691457.2018.1530645

Shaw, I and Ow, R. (Eds.). 2019. Asian Social Work: Professional Work in National Contexts. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Paperback edition 2021.

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘Point of entry.’ In Shaw, I and Ow, R. (Eds.) Asian Social Work: Professional Work in National Contexts. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Shaw, I. and O’Neill, P. 2020. ‘Social work within governmental, social and cultural regimes’ In Shaw, I and Ow, R. (Eds.) Asian Social Work: Professional Work in National Contexts. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Shaw, I. 2020. ‘Professional practices in national contexts.’ In Shaw, I and Ow, R. (Eds.) Asian Social Work: Professional Work in National Contexts. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘Qualitative research in social work.’ In Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., Hardy, M. and Williams, H. Research Methods Foundations: An Encyclopaedia. London: Sage Publications

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘Research networking and collaboration: a case study.’ Qualitative Inquiry. 25 (9-10): 1128 –1136. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809144 

Shaw, I. and Lau, D. 2019. ‘Ada Eliot Sheffield: Sociological Inquiry in Social Work.’ In Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., Hardy, M. and Williams, H. Research Methods Foundations: An Encyclopaedia. London: Sage Publications

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘F. Stuart Chapin and Experimental Sociology.’ In Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., Hardy, M. and Williams, H. Research Methods Foundations: An Encyclopaedia. London: Sage Publications.

Shaw, I. with Hardy M. 2019. ‘Career interview’ Qualitative Social Work. 18 (3): 370–381

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘質的研究のピアレビューの方法をどのように開発したらよいのか' (‘How to Develop a Peer Review Method for Qualitative Research Papers’) The Japanese Journal of Nursing Research. 52 (2):104-108. 

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘The craft of journal practice.’ Qualitative Social Work. 18 (2): 194-211

Shaw, I. 2019. ‘“Let us go then, you and I”: Journeying with Ada Eliot Sheffield.’ Qualitative Social Work 18 (1): 116–138