Master of Social Work

The Master of Social Work (MSW) programme offered by the Department of Social Work, Mizoram University, is a two-year postgraduate professional programme designed to prepare socially committed, ethically grounded, culturally responsive, and professionally competent social work practitioners, researchers, educators, and development professionals. Situated in the socio-culturally rich and diverse context of Northeast India, the programme responds to complex social realities through a pedagogical model that integrates cultural humility, respect for cultural diversity, glocal engagement, field-based learning, specialised professional training, and research-based inquiry. By bringing together academic excellence, indigenous knowledge systems, experiential learning, and contemporary professional practice, the programme establishes an integrated educational foundation for transformative social work education. Building upon this integrated pedagogical foundation, the programme aims to nurture professionals committed to social welfare, social justice, human dignity, sustainable development, and the empowerment of individuals, families, groups, and communities. A distinctive feature of this integrated programme is its emphasis on cultural humility, respect for cultural diversity, and sensitivity to indigenous worldviews, local traditions, and plural social realities. Students are prepared to engage with communities not merely as service providers, but as reflective learners, collaborative partners, and facilitators of participatory social change. Meaningful social change, however, requires practitioners who can connect community realities with wider developmental processes. To situate such participatory social change within wider systems, the programme adopts a glocal approach that enables students to understand and respond to social issues across interconnected local, regional, national, and global contexts. This glocal orientation equips learners to critically examine grassroots realities while situating them within broader developmental, policy, and international social work frameworks. Such a multi-scalar understanding provides the conceptual bridge between community realities and professional action, and this glocal vision is operationalised through a carefully designed curriculum. To translate this glocal vision into professional competence, the curriculum combines rigorous classroom instruction with continuous field work practicum in all four semesters, ensuring sustained professional exposure, experiential learning, and reflective practice. Through supervised placements in communities, institutions, hospitals, schools, civil society organisations, and development agencies, students progressively develop competencies in assessment, intervention, advocacy, research, administration, and community engagement. This practice-oriented learning unfolds progressively across the two academic years through a carefully sequenced curricular journey. In the first academic year of this progression, students acquire a strong foundation in social work philosophy, values, ethics, theories, methods, social sciences, research methodology, and professional field practice. In the second academic year, students pursue one of two specialised streams: Community Development or Family Welfare. The Community Development specialisation focuses on the multidimensional realities of rural, urban, and tribal communities, emphasising participatory development, livelihood enhancement, governance, social inclusion, and sustainable development. The Family Welfare specialisation addresses the developmental, psychosocial, protective, and empowerment needs of children, youth, women, and older persons, with emphasis on family systems, wellbeing, care, protection, counselling, and social support mechanisms. These specialised domains are supported by an equally rigorous academic and research structure. Professional specialisation, therefore, culminates not only in practice competence but also in scholarly inquiry. A distinctive academic feature of the second year is the equal emphasis placed on coursework and dissertation research, ensuring balanced development of professional competence and specialised scholarship. Under faculty supervision, students undertake independent research across the full spectrum of community development and family welfare subfields, generating contextually grounded knowledge that contributes to evidence-informed practice, policy dialogue, and innovative social interventions. Such scholarly engagement naturally culminates in the formation of competent professional graduates.