What happens when the conversation about social justice moves beyond the textbook and becomes an experience? And one more question: is it possible for such a conversation to become part not only of a single academic discipline, but of the education of future psychologists, lawyers, educators, social workers, doctors and other professionals who will work with people every day, make decisions that affect their lives, or provide essential public services?
Over three days, from 3 to 5 September, more than 20 students from seven Bulgarian universities, studying in bachelor’s and master’s programmes in psychology, law, education, social work, and child and family support, explored precisely these questions at the Summer Academy for Social Justice and Inclusive Leadership at New Bulgarian University.
The Academy was jointly organised by the Trust for Social Achievement, New Bulgarian University, and the Know-How Centre for Alternative Care for Children. But behind the three-day programme stood a broader experiment: a pilot attempt to explore diversity, equality, inclusion and social justice as part of the education of students from different academic disciplines, rather than as knowledge reserved for a narrow group of fields.
This matters because social justice, by its very nature, requires a multidisciplinary approach. It does not belong to a single academic field, but cuts across law, education, psychology, social sciences, healthcare and many other professional areas. And most importantly, it is not an abstract theory, but an everyday reality in the lives of every one of us.
Access to the Academy itself was also part of this approach. The Trust for Social Achievement provided scholarships for students from outside Sofia, covering expenses that might otherwise have become a barrier to their participation. In this sense, equality did not remain merely a topic within the programme; it was also applied in the way access to knowledge and learning was made possible. The programme combined theory and policy with case studies, group tasks, personal stories, workshops, psychodrama and reflection exercises. The experiential component was particularly important. There are forms of knowledge that can be conveyed through a text, a concept or a legal framework. But there are also professional situations in which a person needs to recognise their own reaction, automatic judgement, or the category through which they are looking at someone else – especially when they are asked to put themselves in that person’s shoes.
This has a direct connection to our everyday lives. When someone seeks healthcare, social or administrative services, when they speak to a teacher, psychologist, social worker or institutional representative, they are not facing only a professional system. They are also facing another person who interprets the situation, makes judgements and sometimes has considerable power over what happens next. And our personal attitudes shape our professional decisions in practice.
From Policies to the Person
The first part of the Academy raised the question of where equality gets lost between a policy decision and a person’s real life. The panel “Child Policies in Bulgaria: Where Is Equality Lost?” brought together Dr Eva Zhecheva from the Ombudsman Institution of the Republic of Bulgaria, Evgenia Toneva from New Bulgarian University, and Evgenia Volen from the Trust for Social Achievement. The participants examined precisely the gap between a right that is formally guaranteed and the actual possibility of exercising that right.
The law can guarantee a particular opportunity, but this does not automatically mean that the opportunity is equally accessible to everyone. Between policy and the individual there are numerous intermediaries: institutions, rules, professional practices, resources, the language of the system, attitudes and more.
What, for example, does a well-formulated policy look like when viewed through the experience of a particular child and a particular family? Where do barriers emerge? And what remains invisible if we look only at the legal and policy framework?
After this discussion, the Academy took what might initially seem like an unexpected turn towards children’s stories.
In the lecture “Illness in Children’s Stories: Narrative Approaches to Vulnerability”, Prof. Dr Stoyan Stavru explored how the story of a child can gradually become organised around diagnoses, expert categories and institutional rules, until the child begins to lose control over their own story.
The fairy tale here was not an escape from reality. On the contrary, it became a way of seeing a very real professional risk: the person disappearing behind the category through which the system has defined them.
Who Tells the Story of Difference?
From the story of the individual, the conversation moved towards the ways in which stories about entire communities are created.
Ognyan Isaev from the Trust for Social Achievement showed what lies behind the seemingly neutral choices about what appears in textbooks, museums and academic research. In the lecture “The Roma Discourse – History, Present and Tomorrow”, participants examined archival images and explored how seemingly neutral decisions – which photograph is displayed in a museum, which story appears in a textbook, which topic becomes the subject of academic research, and so on – in practice contribute to constructing the public narrative.
This is particularly important because professionals rarely begin their work from a “blank slate”. Each of us carries previously learned categories, images and explanations about the world.
The question, therefore, is not only how society talks about Roma people, people with disabilities, families living in poverty or other groups. The question is how these accumulated narratives enter the consultation room, the classroom, the social service, the hospital, the courtroom or the administrative counter.
From the Story of the Other to Our Own Perspective
This was precisely where the Academy moved from knowledge about “others” towards reflection on ourselves.
The programme “Together in a Diverse World” by the Trust for Social Achievement also focused on this connection between what we learn and our own reactions. Participants did not simply discuss concepts such as stereotypes, privilege and discrimination; they were placed in situations that allowed them to observe their own reactions and the ways in which they make decisions.
Through the “Tree of Life”, students worked with their personal stories and identities. In the adapted format of the Trust for Social Achievement’s “Together in a Diverse World” programme, the focus gradually shifted from concepts towards participants’ own reactions, positions and automatic interpretations.
This is one of the important pedagogical hypotheses behind such an approach. When dealing with topics such as discrimination, stereotypes, power, privilege and social inequality, another definition is not always enough. Sometimes understanding begins when a person finds themselves in a situation that makes them notice their own reaction.
For students preparing for professions involving direct work with people, this question is particularly significant. The future social worker, psychologist, teacher, lawyer or professional working with children and families will not encounter abstract “target groups” in their practice. They will encounter specific people, each with their own story, dignity, fears, resources and limitations.
One of the participants, a social worker, described precisely such a shift in perspective. What they experienced at the Academy had prompted them to look differently at their everyday work in supporting, advocating for and counselling people. Even when a professional is strongly motivated to help, they noted, there may be aspects of a situation that remain outside their field of vision.
Learning to See Yourself from the Outside
In the lecture “Discrimination and Activism?”, Mihail Mishev from FORS placed participants in concrete everyday situations involving injustice and invited them to discuss how they would respond. In this way, the conversation about discrimination and activism moved from general principles towards the question of what we do when we ourselves become witnesses to, or participants in, such a situation.
Kapka Dimova’s workshop also explored stigma and the social factors surrounding choice and economic pressure, adding another perspective on how society defines and perceives different life circumstances.
The final perspective introduced at the Academy added another important dimension: the ability of professionals to observe not only the person in front of them, but also their own thinking.
In the psychodrama workshop “The Temptations of Justice”, led by Dr Tsvetelina Yosifova from New Bulgarian University, the psychotherapeutic perspective brought participants back to the question of how we can periodically step away from our immediate reaction and examine it from the outside: What am I thinking at this moment? Why am I thinking it? What is making me react this way? And how does this affect the person in front of me?
Such reflexivity is not an addition to professionalism. In professions built around relationships with people, it is part of professionalism itself.
A Pilot Experience and a Broader Academic Proposition
The Summer Academy cannot and should not be presented as evidence that a three-day format changes professional attitudes. Such a conclusion would require a different kind of research, different tools and follow-up over time.
But the Academy does allow us to formulate a serious pedagogical and academic hypothesis.
Social justice, equality and the ability to work with difference can be approached not only as the content of a specific university course, but as a transversal competence that can be developed across different fields through a combination of academic knowledge, case studies, exposure to different perspectives and experiential exercises.
This is particularly important where universities are preparing professionals who, after graduation, will hold institutional or expert power in relation to other people.
A future psychologist may know their theory very well and still fail to recognize their own stereotype. A social worker may know the procedures but fail to notice when institutional language silences the voice of a family. A teacher may master the methodology but have lower expectations of a particular child. A lawyer may have an impeccable knowledge of formal law but fail to see the barriers that make that right practically inaccessible.
This is precisely why the question “How do we teach social justice at university?” is not simply a question about adding another course.
It is a question about what kind of professional the university wants to send into society.
And the Summer Academy was a small-scale pilot attempt to explore what happens when academic knowledge is combined with experience, personal reflection and an encounter with another person’s perspective.
Perhaps the next step is for this topic not to remain confined to a single Summer Academy.