Kathrin Aghamiri

Prof. Dr. Kathrin Aghamiri serves as Professor of Educational Science/Social Pedagogy with a focus on social work and schools at the Department of Social Work, Münster University of Applied Sciences, a position held since 2016. Her research centers on democratic participation as a fundamental element of emancipatory social work, emphasizing structurally anchored everyday rights and dialogic approaches across practice, research, and teaching contexts.

Her academic journey commenced with vocational training as a precision mechanic before pursuing graduate studies in social work at Kiel University. This diverse background informs her fascination with social work's multifaceted fields, theoretical approaches, and communication dynamics, cultivated through practical experience in child and youth welfare settings. Her doctoral dissertation investigated how children appropriate, benefit from, and reinterpret social-educational group programs in elementary schools.

Key research interests include social-pedagogical user research examining service recipient perspectives, and ethnographic methodology development through the collaborative project "Doing Social Work" with Rebekka Streck and Ursula Unterkofler. Since February 2022, she has co-chaired the specialist group "Recipients, Users, and (Non)Use of Social Work" within the German Social Work Association (DGSA), advancing critical discourse on user agency and structural power dynamics in service delivery.

Professionally, Aghamiri actively shapes disciplinary discourse through her DGSA leadership and ongoing collaborative research. Her work bridges theoretical rigor with practical application, focusing on empowering service users through participatory methodologies and critical examination of rights frameworks within social work contexts. Current projects emphasize empirically supported theory building from lived experiences of both practitioners and service recipients.