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Webinar #19: The Cloud and the Ground: Digital Literacy for the Social Work Profession
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Presenter: Dr Michael Wallengren Lynch, Malmö University, Sweden.
3rd November 2026, 1-2 pm (Irish time, same time as London, Lisbon). Click on the read more button to find out more about this free webinar. Image copyright: Dr Michael Wallengren-Lynch
Dr Michael Wallengren-Lynch, Malmö University, Sweden
Artificial intelligence is increasingly entering social work practice, education and welfare systems. Yet, as social work increasingly engages with decolonisation and the enduring legacies of colonialism, are we sufficiently attentive to how similar logics of extraction, appropriation and concentrated power may be taking new forms around us? This presentation moves beyond the AI interface to examine, through the lens of coloniality, the material and political systems that make AI possible: data, land, energy, infrastructure, corporate ownership and knowledge. Drawing on developments in northern Sweden and Ireland, it explores how the supposedly immaterial “cloud” is grounded in particular places, resources and relationships of power. Growing grassroots resistance to data centres around the world further raises questions about who decides how local resources are used, who benefits, and who bears the costs. The presentation considers how these processes return to social work through material inequalities, welfare needs and digitally mediated political discourse. It argues that digital literacy must include critical infrastructural literacy: the capacity to recognise and critically examine the material, political and historical systems operating “under the hood” of AI.
About the presenter
Michael Wallengren-Lynch is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Malmö University, Sweden, and a graduate of the MSW programme at UCC (2004). His research has focused on social work education, critical and reflective pedagogy, school social work, and social work in crisis and emergency contexts. More recently, his work has examined digital literacy and the implications of artificial intelligence for social work education and practice. He is co-author of Decolonising Social Work Education: Memory, Haunting and Critical Hope in the Nordics (Routledge, 2025), reflecting a broader interest in coloniality, power, and social work. His forthcoming book on School Social Work in the Nordics will be published by Oxford University Press in 2027.
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About this series: This free webinar series is run by Dr Kenneth Burns, @UCCsocialwork, University College Cork, Ireland. The aim of the series is to support front-line practitioners and managers in social work practice, and community & voluntary services. All are welcome to attend. @UCCsocialwork webinar convenor: Dr Kenneth Burns
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