Resources
Books for social work students, educators and practitioners
Rai, Lucy (2021) Writing for Social Work, SAGE https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/writing-for-social-work/book266706
Rai, Lucy (2014) Effective Writing for Social Work, Policy Press https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/effective-writing-for-social-work
Journal and other published articles
2022
Journal article on ethics in the research project
Lillis, Theresa; Twiner, Alison; Balkow, Michael; Lucas, Gillian; Smith, Miriam and Leedham, Maria (2023). Reflections on the procedural and practical ethics in researching professional social work writing. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (Early Access).
2020
Journal article on time and the written record in social work
Lillis, Theresa; Leedham, Maria and Twiner, Alison (2020). Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice: The Case of Contemporary Social Work. Written Communication, 37(4) pp. 431–486.
Journal article on findings from the WiSP corpus
Leedham, Maria; Lillis, Theresa and Twiner, Alison (2020). Exploring the core ‘preoccupation’ of social work writing: A corpus-assisted discourse study. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, 3 pp. 1–26.
2019
Essay on social work writing and bureaucracy
Barklow, Michael and Lillis, Theresa (2019) Social work writing and bureaucracy. A tale in two voices.
This essay published by the Centre for Welfare Reform is part of an ongoing dialogue between Michael Balkow, children’s social worker and Theresa Lillis, PI on WiSP, about the function and nature of writing in contemporary social work.
Exploring writing in social work using a corpus – Conference abstract
Leedham, Maria; Lillis, Theresa and Twiner, Alison (2019). Exploring the core ‘preoccupation’ of professional social work writing: A corpus-assisted discourse study. In: International Corpus Linguistics Conference 2019, 26-29 Jul 2019, Cardiff University, UK.
2018
Journal article on social work as a writing-intensive profession
Lillis, Theresa; Leedham, Maria and Twiner, Alison (2017). ‘If it’s not written down it didn’t happen’: Contemporary social work as a writing intensive profession. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 14(1) pp. 29–52.
Working across disciplinary areas to research writing…
Lillis, T. and Rai, L. (2011) A case study of a research based collaboration around writing in social work, Across the Disciplines ISSN: 1554-8244.
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Conference and presentation slides
Slides from conference presentation, based on work in progress – creating the corpus
Leedham, M., Lillis, T. & Twiner, A. (2018). Creating a corpus of social workers’ writing: Methodological challenges, representational issues and analytical concerns. Paper presented at the 4th Corpora and Discourse International Conference, Lancaster University, 22nd to 24th June.
Sample of slides from conference presentation, based on work in progress – focus on texts, trajectories and technologies
Lillis, T., Leedham, M. & Twiner, A. (2017). Writing in contemporary social work: Texts, trajectories and technologies. Paper presented at the 50th British Association for Applied Linguistics Conference, University of Leeds, 31st August – 2nd September.
Sample of slides from conference presentation, based on work in progress – challenges of combining methods in research on social work writing
Lillis, T., Leedham, M. and Twiner, A. (November 2016) Combining ethnography and corpus to research writing practices in social work: challenges and opportunities in methodology, epistemology and application. Paper presented at the Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Conference, Copenhagen.
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What’s writing in the academy got to do with work based writing?…
Theresa Lillis and Lucy Gray (2016) | Book chapter to be published. May 2016.