Lancaster Social Work is excited to be part of the (inter)national roll out of Social Work Book Club @SWBookClub. Initiated by Amanda Taylor @AMLTaylor66 at UCLan, the project is supported by the Higher Education Academy. The purpose of SW Book Club is to provide an informal opportunity to discuss novels and other non-academic texts within a social work context. A particularly exciting element of the project is the melding of face to face discussions with online engagement using social media, in particularly twitter, blogs and storify.

The format of @SWBookClub has a live streamed discussion hosted at UCLan involving guest academics with relevant research interests. Participating universities watch the initial stages of the discussion and then break into their own discussions. Students act as ‘guest tweeps’ contributing to the twitter discussion.

After participating in the first discussion of the novel Room by Emma Donoghue members of the Lancaster SWBookClub are exploring ways to develop our own approach to engaging with the wider @SWBookClub community. We envisage this may involve additional meetings experimenting with different formats for example poetry, narratives or film with contributions from Lancaster academics and other partners.

We are keen to involve all members of the Lancaster Social Work Community and would welcome suggestions for possible readings, different formats and other developments.