Thank you!

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in the Youth In Motion workshop yesterday. We were really pleased by the depth of engagement and I think, as the organisers, we felt slightly overwhelmed (in a good way!) by the wide range of critical issues and ideas that were discussed. We're going to do our best to make sense of the material that was generated and we'll be posting some of it on the blog over the next few weeks. If there are any emerging ideas you'd like to share, or any responses you have to the event itself, please leave us a comment. We'd love to know your thoughts.

Program

With the workshop just two days away we want to share with our participants the structure for the day. Please arrive for registration from 9.30am so we can begin promptly at 10.15am.

We look forward to meeting you all! :-)

Structure of the Day

9.30 Arrival, registration, coffee

10.15 Welcome

10.30 Keynote panel

12.00 Lunch

13.00 Small group sessions

Break-out according to similar research interests. Each participant presents position paper. Group discussion and ‘mapping’ of main themes and connections.

14.30 Break

14.45 Regroup
Small groups present their mapping to whole workshop for discussion and consolidation, highlighting the key issues and directions for the future of youth research.

16.30 Wrap-up and future action/recommendations

16.45 Close

Getting to the workshop

If you are unsure how to reach University College London, please follow the links below. The first provides a general overview of how to reach the university campus on public transport. The second provides location details for the UCL Department of Geography. The third is a map of the campus, which highlights the location of the UCL Department of Geography.

1) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/locations/public-transport

2) http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/contacts-and-location/location-details

3) http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/contacts-and-location/map.jpg/view

If after following these links you are still unsure, you can contact the department directly using the details provided below

E-Mail: enquiries@geog.ucl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 0500
Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 0565

Fully Booked

We've had some great submissions and responses to our call for participation at the UCL Youth in Motion workshop on the 16th of June. The event is now fully booked, but as we are still receiving requests to attend, we have created a waiting list to accommodate for cancellations. If you would like to be placed on the waiting list please email Caitlin at c.o'neill@ucl.ac.uk or James at james.esson.09@ucl.ac.uk

As always, if you're unable to attend in person but you're keen to connect with the event, please get in touch and share some of your questions or ideas via this blog.

Pre-workshop entertainment

We have received a few emails from participants regarding preparation for the workshop. To clarify, you do not have to come with a formal paper or chapter from your thesis, as the small group sessions will be based on the discussion points from your abstract. Traditional (lecture style) conferences are fine, but the aim of this workshop is to cultivate a space for the discussion of ideas, not a presentation of them. We hope that our alternative approach will provide a more interactive experience and environment for participants.

For those of you looking for some pre-workshop ‘entertainment’, below are some suggested readings to keep you occupied. All of the articles listed can be found quite easily using Google Scholar. Please feel free to recommend articles, books, websites etc that you feel will be of interest to other participants.

Enjoy!

Ansell N, van Blerk L, Hajdu F and Robson E (2010) ‘Spaces, times and critical moments: A relational time-space analysis of the impacts of AIDS on rural youth in Malawi and Lesotho’ Environment and Planning A. 43 (3), pp. 525-544

Evans, B. (2008) 'Geographies of youth/young people.' Geography compass. 2 (5), pp. 1659-1680.
Hopkins P, Alexander C (2010) ‘Politics, mobility and nationhood: upscaling young people's geographies’. Area. 42 (2), pp. 142-144

Jeffrey, C. (2011) ‘Geographies of Children and Youth II: Global youth agency’. Progress in Human Geography. Published online before print.

Jeffrey, C. (2010) ‘Geographies of children and youth I: eroding maps of life’. Progress in Human Geography. 34 (4), pp. 496-505

Vanderbeck, Robert M. (2008) ‘Reaching critical mass? Theory, politics, and the culture of debate in children’s geographies’. Area. 40 (3), pp. 393-400

Youth in Motion - preview!

We've had some great submissions for the Youth in Motion workshop at UCL on 16th June. We thought we'd share some of the emerging ideas via the blog to whet your appetites in advance of the day itself. Below are just a few of the themes and questions that participants are hoping to explore.

If you'd like to join the discussion in person on the 16th, we have a couple of places still available. (Although please note that we are no longer able to accept any further position papers.) Please email Caitlin at c.o'neill@ucl.ac.uk or James at james.esson.09@ucl.ac.uk if you'd like to register. If you're unable to attend in person but you're keen to connect with the event, please get in touch and share some of your questions or ideas via this blog.

Preview questions

How might disciplinary paradigms of education have overlooked the practical articulation students have within educations institutions? How should we think of the school through the ambiguous engagement/movement of the students? What other socialities and subjectivities may be encouraged by the school that nonetheless feature peripherally in theorizations of education? (Charis Boutieri, King's College London, UK)

How do young people's bodies and corporeality relate to and/or become incorporated by the internet/mobile technologies? How do these technologies facilitate movement and mobility in material spaces? Do these technologies provide spaces of belonging, or do they create a further layer of exclusion for young people to negotiate and resist? (Gary Downing, University of Reading, UK)

What sort of research methods might permit more effective analyses of young people’s movement through urban places, and the kinds of affective atmospheres generated in these movements? (Cameron Duff, Monash University, Australia)

In what ways do public youth organisations serve both youth and the state? How can public youth organisations contribute to our understanding of young people's self-definition and broader definitions of "youth", as well as their participation, exclusion, inequalities and resistance? (Falma Fshazi, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France)

What should be the transformative role of the university establishment in supporting efforts for access to higher education to immigrant youth who are in precarious immigration situations (asylum seeking or undocumented)? What does silence on this point signify within the larger discourse of inequalities? What ethical issues does political-scholarly activism for youth in precarious immigration situations raise for researchers and scholars? (Felipe Mendez, McGill University, Canada)

Youth mobility in Africa

Dr Gina Porter (Durham University) has shared the following link with workshop participants and blog followers:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/child.mobility/

The booklet on young people's mobility was produced by the 70 young researchers (aged 11-19) involved in the project. Further information is also available via the website.

REMINDER: 9th May submission deadline for Position Paper Abstracts

The deadline for submitting your Position Paper Abstract is fast-approaching. We would love to have as many confirmed submissions as possible by the 9th of May 2011.

Places to attend the workshop are free but limited - they're filling up so don't delay!

See the Call for Participation post below for more information on what to include in your brief abstract - if you're unsure of what to write or how to present your work, then shoot us an email expressing your interest and we'd be happy to help or answer your questions.

Caitlin - c.o'neill@ucl.ac.uk

James - james.esson.09@ucl.ac.uk

We look forward to seeing you in June! :-)

Confirmed Contributors

We are pleased to begin announcing our confirmed contributors so far. Check back soon for more exciting additions to our panel.

We can't wait to hear what these keynote panelists have to say...

Dr. Nicola Ansell

Nicola is a Reader in Human Geography in the Centre for Human Geography and the Deputy Head of Teaching and Learning in the School of Sport and Education at Brunel University, UK.

Her research interests encompass the geographies of youth and childhood, gender, and education and critical pedagogy. She has written extensively on education, livelihoods and food-security among AIDS-affected young people in Southern Africa.

Nicola's institutional webpage

Dr. Peter Hopkins

Peter is a Senior Lecturer in Social Geography and the Postgraduate Director for the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, UK.

His research interests centre on exploring how inequalities and discrimination affect people in their everyday lives. He works on young people's geographies and the geographies of religion, faith and spirituality, with a focus on how these intersect with notions of masculinity and ethnicity.

Peter's institutional webpage

Dr. Robert Vanderbeck

Robert is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, UK.

His research interests surround contemporary processes of social exclusion and inclusion. He is particularly interested in childhood and youth, religion, sexualities, racialization, urban public spaces, and qualitative methodologies.

Robert's institutional webpage

Weaving our panel together will be our discussant...

Dr. Claire Dwyer

Claire is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at University College London (UCL) and she serves on the editorial boards of Gender, Place and Culture and South Asian Diaspora.

Claire's research interests centre around the geographies of race, ethnicity, diaspora and transnationalism with a specific focus on Muslim identities in Britain. Her work is also rooted strongly in feminist geographies.

Claire's institutional webpage

Event FAQ's

We've had a great response to our Call for Participation so far...

A number of people have asked some important questions regarding the day - so we've put together some common Q&A's below.

Should you have any more queries don't hesitate to email us or comment below!

Q: Will refreshments and lunch be provided for free on the day?

A: Yes, we will be providing coffee, tea and biscuits during the morning/afternoon breaks and a cold buffet lunch. Be sure to inform us of any special dietary requirements so we can prepare food accordingly.

Q: Is there a travel fund available for the participants?

A: Due to limited funding we are unable to offer any bursaries to contribute towards participants' travel to the workshop. We recommend that potential participants apply for funding from their home institution or an external funding body. If you are required to submit documentation confirming your attendance in order to receive a travel grant, we will be happy to provide you with a letter confirming your acceptance to take part once we have received your short position paper (see the Call for Participation).

The day itself...

Rather than structuring the day around the presentation of individual papers, we are aiming to create an environment where we can creatively and critically engage with key conceptual and methodological questions relating to research on youth movement(s).

The day has been structured to include a keynote panel discussion- currently comprising Dr Claire Dwyer (discussant), Dr Peter Hopkins, Dr Nicola Ansell and Dr Robert Vanderbeck (panelists). Each will briefly introduce themselves and their current work. The discussant will then pose some opening questions to each panellist specifically, then a few questions to the panel as a whole. Questions and discussions will then open up to everyone.

The keynote panel discussion will then be followed by interactive sessions where all participants (e.g. students, post doc and lecturers) will be placed in groups according to their research interests. Each participant will present their position paper and questions to the group, allowing for critical group discussions culminating in the ‘mapping’ of key themes and connections. This approach will be particularly beneficial to research students facing methodological or conceptual challenges, as they will be able to discuss their given topic with established lecturers. Conversely established lecturers will be exposed to new and innovative understandings of youth and how contemporary research is being approached. Amongst other benefits of this approach, it is hoped that the 'mapping' of key themes and connections will provide an effective way to gauge and visualise the academic landscape in the field of youth studies.

Written by James

YiM Call for Participation

Call for Participation

UCL Youth Geographies Research Group (YGRG) Workshop – Thursday 16th June 2011

‘Youth in Motion: Spatializing Youth Movement(s) in the Social Sciences’

Social science research frequently implicates movement(s) when examining the nature, meaning and experience of space and place. Exploring movement(s) itself/themselves can be as revealing of human lives as the sites in and across which they are located. Focusing on the perspectives of youth, this workshop aims to explore the ways in which young people define, experience, initiate or resist movement(s), and the ways that we as social scientists understand/research them. Taking notions of movement, motion and mobility in their broadest senses and at a variety of scales, we extend the reach of the workshop to encompass discussion on themes such as;

• young bodies and corporeality
• spatial freedom and restriction
• travel and migration
• emotional and developmental transition
• youth subjectivities and narratives in flux
• socio-economic and cultural inequalities of participation and engagement
• contested spaces of belonging and exclusion

Rather than structuring the workshop around paper sessions, we are keen to foster open discussion and critical engagement with key conceptual and methodological questions relating to research on youth movement(s). The day will include a keynote panel discussion and interactive sessions where all participants will be encouraged to share aspects of their work. We are therefore eliciting submissions in the form of short (five minute) position papers concisely outlining a personal research project, question, problem or theme, coupled with key questions to be discussed by workshop participants. Position paper submissions are not a prerequisite to attend, but we would encourage prospective participants to do so in the interest of generating vibrant discussion.

Position paper abstracts plus proposed discussion questions (totalling no more than 200 words) should be sent to Caitlin O’Neill Gutierrez at c.o’neill@ucl.ac.uk or James Esson at james.esson.09@ucl.ac.uk by 5pm on Monday 9th May. This is a free event but places are limited and registration is required. The workshop will take place between 9.30am-5pm on Thursday 16th June in the Department of Geography, Pearson Building, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. Lunch will be provided.

This workshop is organised by the UCL Youth Geographies Research Group based in the Department of Geography, University College London.

We hope that the workshop will provide a platform for those working across the Social Sciences to network, share ideas and engage critically with a host of common ‘youth’ themes, whilst also contributing to a ‘mapping’ of where we stand together on youth research today.

Launch - Youth in Motion

Welcome to the online home of the UCL Youth Geography Research Group (YGRG).

We are excited to announce the launch of our inaugural event:

"Youth in Motion - Spatializing Youth Movement(s) in the Social Sciences"

The event will take place on 16th June 2011 at the Department of Geography, Pearson Building, University College London, U.K.

We will use this blog to keep you up-to-date with the event's development - including the call for participation, the schedule for the day, the confirmed keynote panelists (these are people you'll be thrilled to hear speak!) and any other nuggets of info/wisdom we think are relevant to the day.

Part of why we want to host this event is to develop a strong and cohesive network of colleagues (and friends!) who work on various aspects of 'youth' across the social sciences, so we'll also be posting profiles of people involved and ways of contacting them should their work speak to you.

Finally, please DO come along to our event in June, it's free to attend and we promise it'll be a jam-packed day of discussion, networking and ripe opportunities for future collaboration!

Cheers,

Caitlin, Rebecca, Femi and James (UCL YGRG founders)