Thomas MARTHALER

Thomas Marthaler is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Luxembourg. After his studies in Educational Sciences/Social Work at TU Dresden/Germany he worked in research projects on care-leavers (youth welfare) in Saxonia, and on families in youth welfare in Germany. From 2002 to 2013 he worked as scientific assistant and lecturer at Kassel University focusing on Theories and History of Social Work, Regulations and Organization of Child and Youth Welfare/Child Protection in an international perspective as well as ‘Social Diagnosis’. He holds a PhD in Social Politics (Dr. rer. pol.) from Kassel University. His doctoral thesis was on paradigms of the family in German Law from 1900 to our days. He was principal investigator of the project ‘Law and transnational Social Work – legal norms of child protection in Africa.’ In 2010 he was guest lecturer in social pedagogy at Universidade Federal de Pelotas/Brazil.

His main research focus resides in the further development of the “Theory of Scales” within the Matrix-Research Project (see under “Current research”). More specifically, and with regard to social work, he is working, together with Claude Haas, on a concept of social work as relational, scaling-sensible bricolage work.