Patience Nelson Kawamala is an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Social Work, serving in the Department of Social Work. She is currently a PhD candidate in Health Sciences at the Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. She holds an M. A in Community Work from Bergen University College, Norway; a Diploma in Education from Dar es Salaam Teachers’ College in Tanzania; and an Advanced Diploma in Social Work from the Institute of Social Work, in Tanzania.
As a lecturer, she has a broad experience on facilitating various modules such as Developmental Social Work, Child Protection, Social Work in Medical Settings, as well as supervising students’ dissertations and project papers.
As a social work academic, she has taken part in developing and reviewing curricula. She has also been consulted in several writers’ workshops with the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children; and developed teachers’ and students’ practicum guides for a Community Health Programme run by various institutes under the ministry. Furthermore, she was engaged in the Healing Families – Positive Parenting project which was run collaboratively by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), The Institute of Social Work and The Social Welfare Department, to impart positive parenting skills to parents with the aim of reducing and addressing child abuse and violence against children; both as a facilitator and a task force member. As a researcher, she has experience on group research projects, whereby her PhD study is part of the group research project on the multicultural staff community in municipal health and care services in Norway, conducted by The Centre for Care research, with four different work packages.
Patience´s research interest areas include Human diversity and multiculturalism, Children and youth participation processes, Community work with diverse populations, and Social work in health care settings.

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