Dr Jonathan Parker is Professor of Society & Social Welfare and Director of the Centre for Social Work and Social Policy at Bournemouth University.

He moved to Bournemouth in 2006 after 11 years at the University of Hull where he was one of the founders and director of the Family Assessment and Support Unit, a practice placement agency attached to the University and awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in 1996, and latterly Head of Department of Social Work.

Jonathan's research projects focus on disadvantage and marginalisation, cross cultural aspects of social work, research ethics and violence, conflict and religion. He has also researched and published in theories and methods in social work and dementia care. He has recently conducted cross cultural research on learning and practice with colleagues in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on projects concerning the meanings constructed during church visiting, constructions of adult safeguarding, gendered rituals in professional practice, and research ethics and learning disabled people.

He has published widely, including over 25 books and over 150 academic papers, chapters and reports. Jonathan is the co-editor of the highly successful series of Social Work text books Transforming Social Work Practice and editor of the Journal of Practice Teaching and Learning, and joint editor-in-chief of the international journal Social Policy & Social Work in Transiiton.

Research

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and myself secured a successful fusion funded grant from BU to undertake ethnographic research in Malaysia with the indigenous people's of the Tasik Chini are of Pahang. As part of this work, a visiting professorship and membership of the Pusat Penyelidikan Tasik Cini (Tasik Chini Research Centre) was granted at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia who part funded work in early 2014 with the Orang Asli of the Tasik Chini area (15,000RM). Further research is planned.

I am part of a network of academics and UK universities having an interest in the implications of the Care Act 2014 for understandings and daily practices in the fraught arena of adult abuse, protection and safeguarding. An application for an ESRC seminar series has been submitted with colleagues from Keele University, the University of East Anglia, the University of Chester and the University of Bedfordshire.

I am currently engaged in an ethnography of church visiting with colleague Prof Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and visiting scholar Rev Dr Ian Terry, with a view to examining further the meanings constructed by religious and non-religious visitors to buildings that are considered, by some, as sacred.

I am also undertaking a participatory action research study with colleagues (Dr Hyun-Joo Lim, Chris Willetts, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Yadigar Alus) and students as co-researchers. We are exploring student stress and effective ways of dealign with such.

Dr Masi Fathi, Richard Williams (of the social work team) and myself are undertaking research with looking six forms to examine student and family perceptions of and aspirations for higher education as part of the Centre for Excellence in Learning's focus on widening access.

I am looking with colleagues at UEA, University of Vienna and police officers at the ways police officers make decisions in daily practices in respect of abuse, protection and criminal justice.

Publications

Grants

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