Tamara Tries, BA MA
About the Person
Since 10/2025 Research Associate in the FWF project “Post-Migrant Alliances: From Hegemony to the Culture of Conviviality” under the direction of Prof. Dr. Erol Yildiz, Institute of Education, University of Innsbruck
03/2025 – 09/2025 Lecturer in the module Migration and Post-Migrant Perspectives on Education, Institute of Educational Science, University of Innsbruck
Since 12/2023 Member of the Doctoral College „Dynamics of Inequality and Difference in the Age of Globalization“ of the Research Center “Cultural Encounters – Cultural Conflicts“, University of Innsbruck
Since 11/2023 PhD Scholarship at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation
Since 01/2023 PhD student at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Innsbruck, Supervisors: Erol Yildiz and Caroline Schmitt
2022 – 2025 Freelance Lecturer in the bachelor’s program of Social Work, European Distance Learning University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg
2021 – 2023 Various professional activities as a Social Worker (accompanying people with addiction diseases during drug rehabilitation, assisting refugees suffering from mental illnesses, managing training programs for unemployed people)
2018 – 2020 Social Worker, as of 2019 Director of a home for unaccompanied minor refugees in Tyrol, Austria
2016 – 2018 MA Program in Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation, University of Innsbruck
2014 – 2016 Complementary Studies in Person- and Experience-centered Counseling
2014 Practical semester in Tamil Nadu, India, Field: Social Entrepreneurship
2013 & 2015 Deutschlandstipendium
2012 – 2016 BA Program in Social Work, University of Applied Sciences Coburg
PhD Project
Refugee camps: places of negotiation of professional role understandings. A post-migrant perspective.
My project focuses on the structured and organized exclusion of refugees implemented through camp-like forms of shelter. Recent studies show the precarious living conditions as well as difficult working conditions of professionals. Especially debates in the discipline of social work show a high demand to discuss and reflect upon its position in the field. Social work generally acts between unresolvable antagonisms and within various areas of tension. Regarding the professional activities in refugee camps, those tensions are even higher.
Based on the assumption that people generally are forced to take up different – partly contradictory – roles, individuals become actors of established social roles. Therefore, I raise the question of how professionals in refugee camps perceive their roles on site.
As (forced) migration is often viewed as a “problem” rather than an integral component of society, the frame of the research project is a post-migrant perspective. It aims to break through established knowledge systems. Thus, in this research project I consider refugee camps as places in which people negotiate understandings of roles. Trying to take a holistic approach, I focus on the practical knowledge of professionals as well as the perspective of residents.
Research interests
Forced Migration
Refugee camps
Post-migrant perspectives
Critical migration research
Professionalization Discourses of Social Work
Publications
Tries, T. (forthcoming). Absprechen, Ausblenden, Zuschreiben: Eine Einordnung der Rückkehr-Debatte nach Syrien aus einer relationalen Agency- und Vulnerabilitätsperspektive, in: Vulnerabilität und die Macht des Handelns. Praxeologische und anwendungsorientierte Ansätze für die Fluchtforschung. Z’Flucht Special Issue i.E.
Tries, T. (forthcoming). Soziale Arbeit in Geflüchtetenunterkünften: eine postmigrantische Betrachtung, in: Dimensionen einer vielfältigen Fluchtforschung: Diversität, Intersektionalität und heterogene Ankunftskontexte, herausgegeben von laeneAs (Die ländlichen Bildungsumwelten junger Geflüchteter in der beruflichen Ausbildung). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, S. 50-63.
Conference presentations
Tries, T., Litzmann, E., & Gaub, J. (2025). Besondere Schutzbedürftigkeit: zwischen Anerkennung, Pathologisierung und Selbst-identifikation, im Rahmen des Fachtags „Soziale Arbeit, Exklusion und Asylrechtsverschärfungen – Quo Vadis Soziale Arbeit?“, 26.09.2025, Berlin.
Tries, T. & Hermsen, K. (2024). „Dafür habe ich gar keine Zeit“ – Was kann eine transnationale Perspektive in der Praxis?, im Rahmen des Panels Lokale Antworten transnational denken – Transnationale Soziale Arbeit im Kontext FluchtMigration. 5. Konferenz des Netzwerks Fluchtforschung, 18.09.2024, Bonn.
Tries, T. (2024). Das Geflüchtetenlager als Aushandlungsort von Rollenverständnissen. Eine postmigrantische Betrachtung, Posterpräsentation im Rahmen des Nachwuchssymposium „Dimensionen einer Vielfältigen Fluchtforschung: Diversität, Intersektionalität und heterogene Ankunftskontexte in urbanen und ruralen Räumen“, 17.06.2024, Hochschule München
Memberships
Austrian Society for Social Work
The German Association of Social Work (DGSA)
German Network for Forced Migration Studies
Contact
Mail: tamara.tries@uibk.ac.at