Graduate College "Professionalization of the Health and Social Professions in the Context of Social Transformation Processes"

With funding from the state of Brandenburg as part of the program for the future of Brandenburg's universities of applied sciences, both the qualification of young scientists in cross-university graduate colleges is to be made more attractive and new structured career paths for professors at universities of applied sciences are to be developed. The Graduate Collage "Professionalization of the Health and Social Professions in the Context of Social Transformation Processes" was selected together with other applicants to implement the establishment of an "Innovation and Career Center" within the framework of the Graduate College at Faculty 4 of the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg.

The Graduate College is concerned with the interwoven social, political, socio-cultural and economic consequences of the transformation processes (after 1989 and in the context of the current coal phase-out) in local and regional communities in East Germany - with a special focus on Brandenburg - as well as in Poland and Romania. Current challenges to the professionalization of social and health professions and their interfaces will be examined. The contributors take as their starting point a broad understanding of transformation, the symptoms of which include tendencies toward social closure, the disintegration of socioeconomically disadvantaged population groups, and the dismantling of public infrastructure and social and health services.