2 Guest Lectures from University of Pécs: Dr. habil. Erdős Márta, Bognárné PhD

Dr. habil. Erdős Márta, Bognárné PhD, University of Pécs, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of community and social studies

When: Tuesday; November 7th; 8.00; Where: Room U23

Identity Structure Analysis as a potential approach in social work research

Identity Structure Analysis, with its linked framework software, Ipseus, was developed by Peter Weinreich. The theory is a unique integration of previously unrelated ideas and research traditions on self and identity. ISA conceives identity as the “totality of one’s self-construal” (Weinreich, 2004, p. 26), with a continuity between one’s perceptions on their past self and future aspirations. In this synthesis, identity is seen as situated and subject to changes, as people are continually positioning themselves in the varied social and cultural contexts. ISA’s dynamic, systemic and relational approach matches well to social work research, focussing on the person-in-environment. ISA has been used in various societal, cultural anthropological and clinical research projects. This presentation is a summary on the benefits of using ISA/Ipseus. Examples include a previous research project to explore social worker identity development.

When: Wednesday; November 8th; 14:00; Where: Room P21b

Phenomenology of major life transitions and the connections to suicide

Suicide rate in Hungary was nearly the highest in the world in the decades preceding the transition of the social system. Researchers, searching for the potential explanations, focussed on the role of social, cultural, and individual factors. The starting point of this presentation is Tacey ‘s (2005) idea that suicide is the result of a rite of passage going wrong. The phenomenological tradition offers a potential approach to study how people make meaning of their experiences related to major transformations in life, and how exactly these meaning-making processes are influenced by sociocultural factors. How are the processes connected to the classical notion of double bind contexts characteristic of authoritarian systems, and to the more recent theory of arrested flight?