ISPA Activities
Each year ISPA organises a number of different events:
Guest lectures series, seminars and workshops
ISPA has organised a number of seminars, panel discussions and workshops ISPA commenced its activities in June 1997 with a series of guest lectures. The first lecture was presented by Professor Ramesh Mishra from York University in Toronto, Canada, who gave a paper entitled Social Policy in the Nineties: Retrospect and Prospect. The guest lecture series disseminates current thinking on social policy and practice from within Ireland as well as from Europe and the US and places Ireland, North and South, in a comparative context on social policy. Guest speakers in the lecture series have included Johnathon Bradshaw from the University of York, Dr Sile O'Connor, NESC, Dublin, Frances Fox-Piven from City University of New York and Richard Cloward, Columbia University and most recently Professor Fiona Williams from the University of Leeds.
ISPA has also arranged seminars to debate key social policy reports and issues. For instance, seminars were held on the Report of the Commission on the Family in 1998 and on the Green Paper on Abortion in 1999. A workshop focusing on Integrated Responses to Drug Misuse took place in 1999. In 2003, a seminar was co-hosted with the National Disability Authority on forthcoming disability legislation. A number of seminars are planned for 2005.
Conferences
The Association has organised a number of conferences to date: the first a one-day conference hosted by Trinity College Dublin in 1998 on theme of Dimensions of inequality. Due to the success of and interest generated by the first conference, a second one-and-a-half day conference entitled Social Policy in Transition was hosted by University College Dublin in October 2000. The conference explored four areas of social policy namely: multiculturalism and ethnicity; politics in transition; housing; and social security and individualisation.
2001 marked a new venture for the ISPA with a joint event with the Social Policy Association (SPA) in the UK. The joint conference Reconstituting Social Policy: Global, National, Local took place at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland from the 24th to the 26th July.
The ISPA 2002 conference involved a wide ranging discussion of issues relating to social and economic rights including the challenges and opportunities for social policy.
The annual conference in 2003 saw another diverse programme covering changing perspectives on social policy, including such issues as poverty, migration and housing.
Post-graduate activities
The postgraduate research workshop aims to provide postgraduate students of social policy an opportunity to meet others engage in postgraduate research on social policy in Ireland and to provide a supportive forum at which to present their work to their peers and receive feedback on their thoughts and ideas. Three universities have hosted the event to date: Queen's University Belfast, University College Cork and University College Dublin. It is intended to hold a similar event in 2005 in the University of Dublin.
For more information about the workings and ideas of the Irish Social Policy Association please do not hesitate to contact us through:
Anne Matthews
ISPA Development Officer
School of Nursing
and Midwifery
Dublin City University
Tel:00-353-1-7008957
Email: anne.matthews@dcu.ie