Impact and Awards
Recent International Awards
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Dr. Ido Katri, of Tel Aviv University Shapell School of Social Work, has been awarded one of the highest honors reserved for graduate students in Canada: the 2021 prestigious Governor General’s Gold Medal for academic excellence. “Receiving this award reminds me that excellence in research requires that I keep listening to heartbeats—my own and those of the people whose lives my research aims to change,” says Dr. Katri. |
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Prof. Carmit Katz and Dr. Noga Tsur of Tel Aviv University Bob Shapell School of Social Work, together with German colleagues, has won the prestigious 2023 DFG (German Research Foundation) award for their research on developing a conceptual framework of adolescents’ peritraumatic responses to child maltreatment: A cross-cultural study of adolescents in residential care in Germany and Israel. |
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Dr. Maya Fennig has won the Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, for her research on children growing up as refugees in Italy, which has developed some of Europe's strictest anti-refugee policies. Over 43,000 war-affected refugee children are currently living in Italy under steadily worsening conditions in extended exile. How is liminality “lived” and internalized by war-affected refugee children? How does liminality shape children’s sense of identity, belonging, citizenship, rights and future-making? The research includes interviews, focus groups, and innovative arts-based methods—storytelling, mask-making, drawing, map-making, drama, and spoken word—to ethnographically explore the experiences and perspectives of 50 war-affected children and key members of their families and communities in Italy. |
Socia Impact
The Public Committee for Policy Change on Child Sexual AbuseProf. Carmit Katz, of Tel Aviv University Bob Shapell School of Social Work, has founded and headed a special public committee for policy change on child sexual abuse. The committee’s goal was to learn from the stories and testimonies of victims of child sexual abuse, in order to change and improve the treatment and prevention of child abuse in Israel.
The committee’s report, submitted in December 2021 to the President of the State of Israel, Isaac Herzog, is based on the experiences, perceptions, and narratives of over 500 men and women who were sexually abused as children and bravely chose to share their stories. The report focuses on those issues that the victims themselves have pointed out as in need of change in the State of Israel, so that children can live their lives without sexual violence, and so that if a child does experience sexual abuse, the state can provide him/her with the most appropriate aiding services. |
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The clinic, the first of its kind in Israel, aims to expand the pursuit of social policy change as part of social work education by merging broad academic expertise with practical knowledge in the context of social change making. It embodies a connection between academia and the field, between theory and practice, and between contemplation, values, and research. The clinic’s perception is both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, viewing social problems as a product of complex processes, including offensive policy that repeatedly harms people suffering from exclusion and discrimination. The clinic has been active for more than a decade and many of its graduates have become involved in advocating and pursuing policy change in various social matters, while employing the applied skills they acquired at the clinic. |
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A new book, launched in January 2023 by Prof. idit Weiss-Gal of Tel Aviv University Bob Shapell School of Social Work and Prof. John Gal of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, further develops the increasing recognition of social workers as professionals with unique knowledge and insights to contribute to policy formulation and social justice. The book, titled “When Social Workers Impact Policy and Don’t Just Implement It: A Framework for Understanding Policy Engagement,” offers a path-breaking, evidence-based theoretical framework for understanding why social workers engage in policy, both as professionals and citizens, and the impact of their actions. Drawing on concepts from social work and the political, sociological and policy sciences, the authors set out the implications of this framework for research, education and practice. |
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In the summer of 2022, Prof. Einat Peled, Prof. Guy Shilo and PhD Candidate Ayelet Prior hosted at the Bob Shapell School of Social Work a three-full day research workshop attended by Israeli researchers as well as researchers from around the world. The workshop marked the culmination of their groundbreaking study on helping youth and young people involved in prostitution. The workshop allowed global perspective for practitioners and researchers in the field, and the discussions combined legal aspects of prostitution and the dynamics of help-seeking processes among youth and young adults who engage in prostitution and who often belong to marginalized populations. The workshop thus expanded the dialogue among the community of researchers and practitioners in this field and the understanding of means to help, support and assist these youngsters. |
