Keynote Speakers

Meet the Keynote Speakers

Dr Mayssoun Sukarieh

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Dr Mayssoun Sukarieh

Dr Mayssoun Sukarieh is Reader in the Department of International Development. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Since then, she has lectured in anthropology and development studies in universities around the Arab region (American University of Beirut; American University of Cairo) and in the US (Columbia and Brown Universities).

She is the author of: A Global Idea: Youth, City Networks and the Struggle for the Arab World as well as co-author of Youth Rising: The politics of youth in the Global economy. She has published widely across an interdisciplinary range of highly ranked academic journals including, Journal of Youth Studies; Anthropological Quarterly; Political and Legal Anthropology; Third World Quarterly; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Race and Class; and the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

Dr Siobhán McAlister

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Dr Siobhán McAlister

Dr Siobhán McAlister is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology, and a member of the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University Belfast.

Her research focuses on youth conflict, marginalisation and children’s rights. She has extensive experience in participatory research with children and young people, examining criminal justice processes, experiences of violence and victimisation, and conflict legacy.

Siobhán works closely with NGOs and utilises her research to advocate for the protection and promotion of children’s rights. She has undertaken research commissioned by various government departments (e.g. Department of Justice, The Executive Office) to inform policy and practice developments, including the Strategic Framework to End Violence Against Women and Girls.

She is currently leading an ESRC-funded research project (with colleagues in the Centre for Children’s Rights, Ulster University and the University of Strathclyde) aimed at developing a child and youth informed theory of respect. Siobhán is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Youth Studies.

Prof Steven Roberts

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Prof Steven Roberts

Steven Roberts is a professor of Education & Social Justice in the School of Education, Culture and Society, and Associate Dean, Graduate Research at the Faculty of Education, Monash University.

Steven is a sociologist with particular interests in youth transitions and social class inequality, and change and continuities in contemporary masculinities.

Steve’s books include Young Working-Class Men in Transition; Youth and Social Class (with Alan France); Masculinity, Labour and Neoliberalism (with Charlie Walker), and the teaching text, Youth Sociology (with Alan France, Julia Coffee and Cathy Waite). He has received research funding from, among others, the ESRC (UK), the Australian Research Council, VicHealth, the Australian Government Dept of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Dept of Education, Skills and Employment.

Steve is also a director on the Board of Respect Victoria, a state government funded organisation dedicated to the prevention of family violence and violence against women in Victoria, Australia.

Prof Ken Roberts

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Prof Ken Roberts

Ken Roberts is now Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He is among the world’s most experienced youth researchers.

He has tracked changes in the youth life stage in Britain from the post-1945 decades to the present, and has directed or participated in projects in all regions of Europe, East and West, across Eurasia and North Africa.

His consistent positions have been that how young people’s lives unfold depends more on opportunity structures than aspirations and choices. He advocates use of the ‘transitions paradigm’ in all domains of young people’s lives, and cautions before generalising about global youth - countries differ!

Dr Tania De St Croix

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Dr Tania De St Croix

Dr Tania de St Croix’s research engages critically with the value and evaluation of 'youth work', a practice of community-based informal education.

She is particularly interested in the perspectives of young people and grassroots practitioners, and in how youth work is affected by policy imperatives. Her recent ESRC-funded study (with Louise Doherty) investigated impact measurement, evaluation and accountability in youth work.

Her book ‘Grassroots Youth Work: Policy, Passion and Resistance in Practice’ explores the experiences of part-time and volunteer youth workers in a wider context of neoliberalism and inequalities. She is committed to collaborating with young people, youth workers and others in planning, carrying out, writing and sharing research.

Most of her experience is in England but she aims to learn from and with researchers and practitioners from other contexts, recently including Japan and Canada. She was a community-based youth worker for twenty years, and remains a youth work volunteer.