Birgit Bütow

Birgit Bütow
Retired university professor (who continues to carry out academic work at the University of Salzburg)

University of Salzburg, Department of Educational Science, Working Group Social Pedagogy
Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, room 2.306, Unipark Nonntal, 2nd floor, 5020 Salzburg

Tel.: +43 (0) 662 8044-4244
E-Mail:

Consultation hour:

The consultation hour takes place on Tuesday between 1.30 to 2.30 p.m. Please send an e-mail before.

Teaching Assistance:

Selina Sedef

Short CV

  • Degree in sociology (1986)
  • PhD and doctorate in the field of gender studies at the University of Leipzig (1990)
  • 1990 to 1992 Research assistant at the University of Leipzig
  • 1990 Foundation of the non-university association ‘alma – Women in Science’ – Chairwoman, several publications and projects until 1994
  • 1992 to 1994 Research assistant at the German Youth Institute in Munich/Leipzig
  • 1994 to 2013 Professorship for Social Work with women and girls at the University of Applied Sciences Jena
  • 2003 Habilitation in educational science, specialising in social pedagogy at the TU Dresden
  • Research and teaching in Jena, Dresden, Marburg and various European cities
  • 2011 to 2012 Visiting Professor for Universal and Social Pedagogy at the University of Zurich
  • Since 2013 Professor of Social Pedagogy, Counselling and Intervention at the University of Salzburg
  • Retired since October 2026. She continues her academic work at the University of Salzburg as part of ongoing research projects.

Research interests

  • Historical-systematic aspects of child and youth welfare and child and youth services as well as the border area of child and youth psychiatry
  • Gender, youth and youth welfare research
  • Theories and history of social work
  • History of social pedagogy in Austria

Ongoing projects

Completed projects

Publications

  • Bütow, B. & Holztrattner, M. (2022). Family-like models of foster care in Austria. History – institution – biographical experiences. Publication series of the ÖFEB Section Social Pedagogy. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich.
  • Bütow, B., Raithelhuber, E. & Holztrattner, M. (Eds.). (2020). (Dis)organisation and (de)institutionalisation in social work. Publication series of the ÖFEB Section Social Pedagogy. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich.
  • Bütow, B. & Maurer, S. (2020). Gendered bodies in the horizon of middle-class norms of normality. Socio-pedagogical perceptions of old and new women’s movements between ‘access’ and ‘enabling’. In C. Schär, J. Ganterer & M. Grosse (eds.), Experience – Occation – Proceding. Body and corporeality as analytical and epistemological categories of social work (pp. 31-48). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
  • Bütow, B. & Schär, C. (2019). Youth bodies in social media. Perspectives of educational science to young people and their photographic self-presentations in digital social networks. In M. Dimitriou & S. Ring-Dimitriou (Eds.), The body in postmodernity. Between disembodiment and body mania (pp. 51-62). Wiesbaden: Springer VS Verlag.
  • Bütow, B. & Maurer, S. (2018). 1989/90: Social work in the GDR and FRG. In F. Eßer (Ed.), History of social work. An introduction (pp. 133-150). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren.
  • Bütow, B. (2018). Social pedagogy in Austria. (Dis)continuities and the unrecognised. Rassegna di Pedagogia, 1-2, 109-126.
  • Bütow, B., Patry, J.-L. & Astleitner, H. (2018). Boundary analyses. Perspectives of educational sciences on a current figure of thinking. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Juventa.
  • Bütow, B. & Munsch, C. (2017). Social work and gender. Challenges beyond universalisation and essentialisation (2nd edition). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
  • Bütow, B., Eckert, L. & Teichmann, F. (2016). Cultures of scientific disciplines as orders of gender. Praxeological analyses of doing gender in academic teaching. Opladen, Berlin Toronto: Barbara Budrich.