IAS Fellow at Grey College, Durham University (January – March 2009)
Professor Abye Tasse is an experienced social work educator. He is currently: Assistant Vice-President for Strategic Planning and International Affairs at Addis Ababa University; Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work; Project leader on Capacity Building at Addis Ababa University; Head of the French Cooperation Program; Member of the Senate and Executive Committee of the Senate of Addis Ababa University; and President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) since his election in 2004.
During the past 21 years, Professor Tasse has also acted in several other capacities: Associate Professor; Chair of Department; Deputy-Director at the Institute of Social Work of Echirolles (Grenoble) in charge of Academic Affairs; and Director General of the Institute for Social Development (Rouen) in France. In addition, he also has worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Rouen in France.
Professor Tasse has also facilitated the development of social work education in other parts of the world. His most recent work has focused on Ethiopia and the Cameroon where he is working closely with colleagues to develop curricula that are relevant to their needs. He specialised in the following areas: Policy on Immigrant and Refugee Matters; Policy on Social Work Education; Research Design in the Social Sciences, particularly on issues related to migration, emigration and integration; Human Resources Development; Monitoring and Evaluating the Restructuring of Institutions of Higher Education; and Consultant on Social Development and Capacity Building.
His main areas of academic research are social work and migration; social work and ethnicity; and comparative research on migration. He has presented papers at many conferences locally, nationally and internationally on these topics, and others including social work values and ethics. He has also published widely in these areas. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Journal of Social Work; Member of the Editorial Board of Social Work and Society Magazine; Guest Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; and Member of the Board of ‘Envisioning Ethiopia’.