Learning from the Past: The Use and Practice of Historical Research

History is SSWR’s newest cluster/topical area, evidencing an upswell of interest among social workers in studying and learning from the past. Yet most social work scholars have not trained in historical research methods. This roundtable provides a foundational understanding of how to use historical research to advance social welfare knowledge and practice. Roundtable panelists include scholars with experience in a range of historical research methods and approaches, including:

• The use of historical methods in participatory place-based research to study and intervene in contested places (such as gentrifying neighborhoods), and biographical research to unearth gaps in mid 20th Century social welfare history.
• The use of archives, newspapers, city maps, residential directories, genealogy, and cemeteries to surface local social work histories, to challenge received histories of local charity, and to shed light on local patterns of inclusion and exclusion.
• The use of archival sources and oral histories to trace how durable sexist/heterosexist stereotypes about women's welfare use and anti-Black racism were born of backlash during the Great Migration of the 1950s–1970s, and to trace how these attitudes shaped state-level 'welfare reform' in the 1980s and 1990s and how this legacy continues to influence how states implement Temporary Assistance to Needy Families in the present.
• The use of intergenerational oral history collection and archive creation as a clinical intervention to recover the deliberately erased histories of morally complex populations, where silencing itself becomes intergenerational trauma and forecloses historical accountability.
• The use of historical methods to examine intersections between white evangelical Christianity and child welfare, and uses archival primary sources to teach histories of mutual aid and resistance by historically marginalized communities.

During this session, panelists will provide examples from their own research to explore the following:

• What kinds of research questions does historical research help social work scholars explore? (i.e. ideological roots of social welfare policies and interventions; controversies/ruptures in the field; turning points in social welfare and/or paths not taken; throughlines and continuances in the field).
• What sources of data are used in historical research? (i.e. oral histories, archival collections, newspaper, genealogical, personal collections, secondary sources, administrative sources).
• What qualitative and quantitative analytic practices are used, and how does that use differ in the context of historical research? (i.e. case study/micro-history, biography, discourse analysis, demographic analysis).
• What are special considerations for data organization, research practices, and/or resources needed in historical research? (i.e. time needed, best practices in data storage and organization, potential travel costs, availability of information).
• How do social work scholars leverage historical research to address pressing issues in the present? (i.e. application of historical research to current social work research, teaching, policy and practice, recovery of erased histories as corrective to distorted historiography).

In addition, attendees will be encouraged to surface their own questions and project ideas to gain insight on how to design and conduct high-quality historical studies that contribute to the current social work knowledge base.