This is an international joint webinar presented by the Social Welfare History Group (USA) and the Social Work History Network (UK). All welcome!

The webinar takes place on Monday, 20 April 2026

• London (BST): 19:30 – 21:00
• New York (EDT): 14:30 – 16:00

Please book via Eventbrite and we will send you a Zoom link nearer the time.

Mimi Abramovitz is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy, Emerita, Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College, CUNY and The CUNY Graduate Center. Abramovitz, a member of the US Social Welfare History Group studies inequality, neoliberalism, nonprofit organizations, and activism through the intersecting lenses of race, class, gender, and history. Known as both an activist and a scholar, she is the author of four books—including Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (4^th ed 2025) and more than 90 articles. Her next book (in process) is Gendered Obligations: The History of Activism Among Black and White Working-Class Women Since 1900. She received “The Lifetime Award for Excellence” from Hunter College (May 2021) and an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University (May 2023).

Cybelle A. Fox is Class of 1944 Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Cybelle is a sociologist whose research examines race, immigration, and the welfare state in the United States. She is best known for her award-winning book, Three Worlds of Relief (Princeton University Press, 2012), which analyzes the incorporation of Blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants in the American welfare system from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Her next book, forthcoming with Princeton University Press, focuses on the rise of immigrant status restrictions in American social policy from 1935 to 1994.

Emilio José Gómez Ciriano is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. He specializes in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and E.U. migration policy and has been a visiting scholar at the College of Europe, University of Salford, Manchester Metropolitan University and KU Leuven. He is currently the Vice president of The Spanish Federation of Human Rights. He has authored numerous books and articles on human rights, migration, and welfare state challenges. His latest book, The Routledge Handbook of Social Work and Migration, was co-edited with Assistant Professor Sofia Dedotsi and Professor Elena Cabiati in January 2026.

Patrick Vernon OBE is a social commentator, writer and campaigner specialising in Black British history, health inequalities and social justice. He is the author of 100 Great Black Britons and has played a leading role in public awareness and advocacy around the Windrush Generation. Patrick has led and contributed to a number of institutional reviews on race and inequality within public services and local government. He is currently Pro Chancellor for Health and Wellbeing at the University of Wolverhampton and works closely with academic, policy and community partners on issues of race, migration and public service reform.

Dr Rebecca Tipton is a Senior Lecturer in Interpreting and Translation Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research interests focus on the provision of interpreting in public services in the UK from contemporary and historical perspectives. Her doctoral thesis (2012) was one of the first to explore interpreter mediation in social work encounters with asylum seekers and refugees, and her current research examines communication support for migrants and refugees in England in the late 1940s and 1950s.