Research at ASH Berlin

Research plays a key role in the development of ASH Berlin.  Application-based research is aimed at developing and academically supporting innovations in professional practice in the fields of social care and healthcare. Engaging in this type of research is also essential to ensure that teaching and further training reflect the latest developments in the various disciplines.

In an environment characterized by a continual and bi-directional flow of knowledge between the university and professional practice, the primary emphasis is on implementing new approaches, processes or solutions to problems, which are fostered through close ties between the development of professional practices and scientific analysis

ASH Berlin supports the research activities of its professors in many ways: by providing funding, promoting the acquisition of external funding and entering into both regional and international research partnerships.

This strategy has proven to be highly successful: In the past ten years, research-related third-party funding expenditures at ASH Berlin have developed enormously. The amount of third-party funding acquired for research at ASH Berlin increased from € 1,391,000 in 2010 to € 2,463,000 in 2020. This development has been fueled, among other things, by the acquisition of a number of larger projects with a corresponding volume of third-party funding, collaborations in research alliances with universities and practice partners, and the funding from the Berlin Institute for Applied Research (IFAF Berlin).

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Health and Health Care Research

Research in the area of health and health care creates the scientific foundation for the innovative further development and resource-conscious organization of the healthcare sector with a patient- and user-centred approach. This research focus analyses both structures and problems related to everyday life and thus contributes to high-quality care for the entire population. Many of the research activities are interdisciplinary and/or inter-professional.

How can we better address target groups that are difficult to reach? What measures can help to improve the autonomy of patients with multiple diseases? What forms of housing and nursing can safeguard the quality of life for dementia patients and their relatives? What deficits in care are noticeable in new therapies? These and other key questions reflect the thematic fields of the research projects conducted at ASH Berlin.

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Social Work Research

This research area focuses on precise empirical analyses, for example of assisted apartment-sharing communities of seniors in need of care, the transition from permanent institutional living to intensive care for people with disabilities, quality management in child protection or the consequences of war and National Socialism. The effects of experienced social exclusion and/or violence are studied with regard to individual life situations. Furthermore, such core concepts of modernity as biography, identity, life world and trans-culturality are taken as points of departure for various empirical-reconstructive studies.

The principle concern of the social work research at ASH Berlin is the theory-based further development of the discipline and the profession: the research compares the demands and standards, the chances of understanding the other, inclusion and participation. Last but not least, the positions and methods of (self-)reflection are studied based on the ethics of the profession.

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Education Research

 In addition to educational theory and questions concerning the foundations of the discipline, this research area also focuses on problems of application.

For example, by focussing on the quality development of research institutions, questions are tackled regarding the care ratio and cooperation between parents, nurseries, elementary schools and places of learning outside the school. Research on processes of learning and education takes into account fundamental issues of experience, knowledge and competence development in various age groups and in informal as well as institutional contexts. In the area of university education research, the focus is on general questions of competence orientation and more specifically on the academization of qualified occupations.

In the field of international comparative education, the research concentrates on developments in early childhood education as well as the training of educators in the international context.

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Research on other topics

This list includes projects that can not be specifically assigned to any of the research areas mentioned above.

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Alice Salomon Archive

Alice Salomon (1872-1948) founded one of the first schools for female social workers in the world. She had a decisive influence on the development of social work in practice, research, theory and education during the Weimar Republic.

The academic relevance of her work is increasingly being recognised, as reflected in research in the late 1990s. The Alice Salomon Archive of ASH Berlin is located in the former workspaces of Alice Salomon in Berlin-Schöneberg and its research is dedicated to her life and work.

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Publication server of ASH Berlin

Our publication server presents different publications of university members, such as essays, research and project documentation.

Publication server

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