CASLC talk by Dr Virginia Calabria
| CASLC talk | |
|---|---|
| Type | Seminar or talk |
| Categories (tags) | Uncategorized |
| Dates | 2025/11/18 - 2025/12/12 |
| Link | https://sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/caslc |
| Address | |
| Geolocation | |
| Abstract due | |
| Submission deadline | |
| Final version due | |
| Notification date | |
| Tweet | Dr Virginia Calabria will be giving a CASLC talk on "Identity at work: exploring Social Workers’ roles and identities to understand their wellbeing in the workplace". 12/12/25, 11-12.30 UK time. Register: https://forms.gle/ty8rfg6dP9LBDG5Z9 |
| Export for iCalendar | |
CASLC talk by Dr Virginia Calabria:
Details:
The Centre for Advanced Studies in Language & Communication at the University of York is delighted to host a talk by Dr Virginia Calabria from Durham University. Dr Calabria will present on: Identity at work: exploring Social Workers’ roles and identities to understand their wellbeing in the workplace.
date: Friday 12th December 2025 time: 11.00am -12.30pm (UK time) place: zoom. To obtain a link, please register if you not on the CASLC guest mailing list. https://forms.gle/ty8rfg6dP9LBDG5Z9
Abstract: Social Work (SW), as a relational profession, is a focal point for discourse and qualitative research (Gunnarsson et al., 2014), particularly around conversational practices. Flinkfeldt et al. (2022) identified three key research themes: interactional practices, institutional activities, and the relationship between theory and practice. These highlight the dialectic between established norms—comprising responsibility, work ethic, guidelines and ideals—and actual practice in everyday interactions. A key practice situated between ‘institutionality’ and the everyday presentation of self (Goffman, 1959) is “identity work” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2010). Despite a wealth of literature exploring SW perceptions and identities (e.g., Hobbs & Evans, 2017), little is known about how these identities are interactionally mobilised in situ by social workers. Focus groups are a common method for investigating SW identity (Linhorst, 2002). Using a corpus of 10:50 hours of 10 online, UK-based focus groups (36 social workers + 12 facilitators = 48 participants), initially aimed at exploring SWs’ relationships with physical activity/well-being at work, we conducted a secondary analysis using Membership Categorisation Analysis (Stokoe, 2012) and Conversation Analysis (Antaki, 2011).
We examined the interactional purposes of identity references (e.g., “I’m still a student,” “As a team manager”) mobilised to preface accounts for (not) engaging in physical activity (cf. Parry, 2013). Preliminary findings indicated that social workers invoked their job/role to perform a number of social tasks: managing one’s (hard-working) image; prefacing a disjunctive experience from others; balancing assigning responsibility for time management between self and institution. Analysing focus groups facilitated by both researchers and SWs (cf. Webb et al., 2023) revealed how epistemics (Heritage, 2012) and common ground (Clark, 1992) facilitated or hindered intersubjective understanding (Lindström et al., 2021) of these roles.
Prior analysis of this data, using thematic analysis, highlighted the social workers’ need for a cultural shift in the profession, to face the barriers of lack of time and resources (Hollett et al. accepted) when it comes to taking care of their own wellbeing, together with a lack of clarity on who is responsible for this change. The analysis using MCA and CA adds a real understanding of how, through unprompted role/identity mobilisation, professionals make sense of how personal responsibility is associated with their role and how this sense emerges as a more or less shared understanding with co-present colleagues. Thus, our findings shed light on the complexity of a profession in which individual and institutional identities blur, and personal and professional responsibilities (e.g., time for well-being in the workplace) have nuanced boundaries.
