Tobias Kindler, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work

Tobias Kindler is a postdoctoral fellow at the UConn School of Social Work’s Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work. His postdoctoral appointment is funded by a Postdoc Mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Dr. Kindler’s research interests include political social work, social policy, children’s rights, and the well-being of young people in residential care. As part of his postdoctoral research, he examines the experiences of social workers serving as elected officials in U.S. state legislatures, including how they use their positions to advance policies aligned with social work values and principles.

Tobias is the co-editor of Social Workers in Political Office: A Comparative Perspective on Recruitment, Career Patterns and Social Advocacy and the co-author of numerous journal articles published nationally and internationally. His work appears in The British Journal of Social Work, Child & Family Social Work, Children and Youth Services Review, European Journal of Social Work, and the Journal of Policy Practice and Research, among other publications.

Coming from Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, Tobias previously worked as a social worker and research associate before joining UConn. He recently earned a Ph.D. in social work from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation, titled “Social Workers in the Policy Process: A Case Study of Swiss Social Workers’ Policy Engagement,” explored social workers’ policy engagement through an in-depth analysis of their involvement in a highly contested reform of social assistance in Switzerland.

He earned his BSW and MSW from the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. During his graduate studies, he worked as a research associate, contributing to a range of qualitative and quantitative research projects. He also taught courses on social policy, policy practice, and research methodologies.

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