Professor Hannah Smithson has worked within the field of criminology for over 20 years and specialises in the area of youth justice. Hannah is the co-convenor of the award winning Greater Manchester Youth Justice Partnership - a partnership between Man Met and each of the 10 Greater Manchester youth justice services. The partnership has led to the creation of a transformative new framework: Participatory Youth Practice (PYP). PYP is the first framework to be co-created with justice-involved children based on their lived experiences. PYP has had an impact on youth justice practice, on national and international youth justice strategies, and, most importantly, on justice-involved children themselves. Hannah works collaboratively with a variety of local, national and international communities and stakeholders, including professionals, activists and third sector organisations. Her research has been instrumental in shaping agendas in research and policy across the interconnected areas of: youth justice, serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation. She has written extensively on the problematic reductionism of SYV to involvement in gangs. Her most recent publications explore the benefits and challenges of participatory practice with justice-involved children. She is currently leading  a UKRI funded project, in partnership with the Alliance for Youth Justice, exploring  the impacts and implications of Covid-19 on the youth justice system and justice-involved children. See Hannah's youth-related  and full profile. 

You can listen to Prof Hannah Smithson and Dr Paul Gray discuss their work on the MCYS podcast. 

Paul has over 20 years’ experience conducting criminological research. Prior to joining Manchester Metropolitan University in 2011, he held research posts in a number of private, public and voluntary sector organisations. During this time, he managed and contributed to numerous multi-method research projects for a wide range of funders - including the Home Office, the Youth Justice Board, the Welsh Assembly, and the Ministry of Justice. He has authored or co-authored over 50 research reports and journal articles on a diverse range of topics including youth engagement, youth justice, anti-social behaviour, and youth resettlement. Paul’s current interests centre around adverse childhood experiences and substance use. His recent research has focussed on areas such as the impact of unresolved trauma, the justice system’s response to young people with adverse childhood experiences; the nature and prevalence of New Psychoactive Substance use among young people; and, young people’s engagement into substance use treatment services. See Paul's full profile.

You can listen to Prof Hannah Smithson and Dr Paul Gray discuss their work on the MCYS podcast. 

Deborah is the Head of Youth Justice for the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies and has over 15 years’ experience of working in youth justice as both a practitioner and service manager. She has implemented sporting programmes such as Positive Futures, and was the recipient of a Winston Churchill Memorial Fund scholarship evaluating the impact of sporting programmes on communities in the USA. Deborah’s current research focuses on youth justice and sport criminology, and she has a particular interest in the impact of boxing on serious youth violence and sexual exploitation. Deborah has published on qualitative research methods and national sporting policy evaluation, and is the grant holder and Principal Investigator for the Comic Relief funded project - Getting out for Good: Preventing Gangs Through Participation as well as co-investigator on various youth justice grants held within the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies.

Current PhD students 

• Jamie Crowther: ‘Kicking Crime into Touch’ Rugby and Positive Youth Development. PVC scholarship scheme
• Vicki Morris ‘How do children’s interaction with professionals at police interview shape their future trajectory in the justice system’
• Anna Manwairing: ‘The Impossibility of Being a Girl’ – a verse novel plus research and commentary.

 See Deborah's youth-related publications and full profile.

April's primary research focuses on children’s lives, agency and cultures in classical Antiquity, particularly Graeco-Roman Egypt. She is currently working on an internationally collaborative project on ancient childhood: Growing Up in an Ancient Metropolis: Children in Roman Oxyrhynchos (with Ville Vuolanto, Oslo/Tampere). She recently co-authored "A Social Archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Egypt. Artefacts of Everyday Life." (with Swift, E., and Stoner, J.), an indpepth reconstruction of life based on objects in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. Her other ongoing projects, and recent publications, relate to the cultures and materiality of infant care across the Graeco-Roman world. April hosts a network of scholars working on Children’s Cultures and Agency, Past and Present, which has seen two international events through MCYS. She is also heavily involved in developing strategies around young people’s aspirations and attainment through engagement and mentorship within Classics, Classical Latin, and Ancient History. She works with the OCR examination board, regional school and sixth-form pupils, and the national Classical Association Teaching Board to provide support and build mentoring networks.

See April's youth-related publications and full profile.

Current PhD students

Rolanda Aboagye: 'The lives and cultures of migrants in the Roman empire'

Adam Aderman: 'The pshyciological and emotional lives of soldiers in the Roman army'

Matthew Ingham: 'Women of the Codex Justinianus'

John is a linguist whose research is predominantly on investigating the expression, construction and performance of identity amongst young people through their language practices. Most of his work involves young people who have grown up in linguistically and culturally diverse urban areas. In his recent research, he has explored how language usage in these contexts relates to gender, acts of non-conformity, and affiliation with different subcultures and scenes. His research covers multiple linguistic situations, with projects carried out in Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and the UK, and combines approaches and ideas from sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, ethnography, and language policy and planning. See John's youth-related publications and full profile.

Ben is an interdisciplinary researcher with an interest in young people’s everyday lives, everyday politics and the place of young people in democratic society. In his PhD research, young participants used digital photography to talk about everyday life as a political arena: about inequalities, inclusion and exclusion, change and opportunities for change in the UK. He has contributed to policy on Votes at 16 as an expert consultant to the European Youth Forum and constituent bodies, including the British Youth Council. His contributions to public debate on young people in politics have included work for the BBC, The Times, the Times Higher Education, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post. Ben is co-convener of the Young People’s Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA) and continues to engage in public debate on young people in politics in Britain and internationally. See Ben's Youth-related  and full profile.

Chloe’s research focuses on children’s and young adult fiction. Her first monograph, Twenty-First-Century Children's Gothic: From Wanderer to Nomadic Subject (Edinburgh University Press) offers a completely new way of reading children’s Gothic literature, rejecting a pedagogical model of criticism in favour of a “nomadic” paradigm. She is currently working on a second monograph that explores metaphysics, materialism and ethics in contemporary writing for children and young adults. She has written extensively on other topics in gothic and horror and on diversity and decolonization in children’s fiction. Chloe has worked with the Manchester Children’s Book Festival and organized events for children and families as part of the annual Gothic Manchester Festival. She is on the steering group for a project that explores science and children’s literature hosted by Edinburgh Napier University. See Chloe's full profile  and website.

You can listen to Dr Chloe Germain Buckley discuss her work on our MCYS podcast.

Jenny is an Egyptologist by training and her primary research interests lie in the social and economic history of everyday people in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in Egypt during the late Christian and early Islamic periods (ca. 5th to 8th centuries CE). She is also interested in the reception of Ancient Egypt, especially in videogames and board games. She is currently the PI, with Caitlin Nunn (MCYS) on the UKRI-funded Citizen Science project, ‘Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging’, about which you can find out more at the project website. Additionally, she is working on two collaborative projects relating to ancient childhood: one looking at Coptic (Egyptian) education in southern Egypt in the 7th century CE (with Raffaella Cribiore, New York) and one exploring the use of board games in Key Stage 2 (primary) education concerning Egypt (with primary schools across the Northwest). Jenny is previously a member of the MCYS Steering Committee and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Egypt Exploration Society. See her full profile for further information.

Rob is a sociolinguist who works primarily within the area of language and identity, with a particular focus on the language of young people. His most recent youth-oriented project, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, explored the ways in which young people in Pupil Referral Units enact identities through language and other social practices. A book about the project: Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity was published by Palgrave in March 2018, and a set of resources to be used with young people and staff in Pupil Referral Units is currently being trialled. Through his research, publications, and media involvement, Rob is committed to challenging the negative discourse surrounding language that doesn’t fit society’s notions of ‘standard’. He works with teaching organisations to explore ways in which young people’s natural linguistic diversity can be used positively in the development of spoken language awareness and ability. See Rob's Youth-related publications and full profile.

You can listen to Dr Rob Drummond discuss his work on our MCYS podcast.

Haridhan is a Reader in Criminology in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. He has expertise in research with children’s and young people’s subjective well-being. Haridhan is the Principal Investigator of the Child Well-being Survey in Bangladesh which is being conducted in collaboration with Children’s Worlds International Survey of Children’s Well-Being. He is the coordinator of . Haridhan has provided expert advice on research with children and young people, and in measuring their subjective well-being to two European Commission funded projects, MYWEB (Measuring Youth Well-Being), and European Cohort Development Project (ECDP). He has also led statistical analysis of large scale survey data for a number of national and international projects including MYPLACE (funded by European Commission), National Surveys (2008, 2010) on Child Well-being in England (funded by The Children’s Society), Safeguarding young people: Professionals attitudes and responses to maltreated children (funded by Big Lottery). Haridhan also reviews regularly funding bids, journal articles, and book proposals for funding bodies and publishers. 

Jo is a Reader and Deputy Head at the Manchester Fashion Institute. Originally trained in design, Jo worked as a designer for international fashion brands, before bringing her industry experience into Higher Education. As a cross-disciplinary researcher, Jo aims to challenge how fashion is perceived as a subject, industry, method, mindset, and force for good. Her research practice focusses on the relationship between youth, dress and identity, positioning fashion as a method, or lens, through which lived experience is articulated. With her colleague, John Earnshaw, Jo instigated Portrait Youth, a participatory research project that explores identities of youth through styling and dress. The Portrait Youth methodology has since been adopted for collaborations with diverse youth groups and several MCYS initiatives including Getting Out for Good and Reclaiming the Narrative. Jo is also working on a project that explores memories of youth through the lens of music and dress. For more information see Jo's full academic profile. 

Fatima is a social scientific researcher whose work interrogates issues around British Muslim youth identity, with a particular focus on the criminalisation of the population through targeted counter-terrorism and security policies, and the discursive construction of the Muslim ‘other’ in media, political and policy narratives. Her work around the Muslim body and post-colonial feminism has also led her to examine the gendered nature of those increasingly normalised anti-Muslim narratives. She uses participatory qualitative methods to collaborate with young Muslims in order to privilege and embolden their voices in social debates that explicitly concern them. Fatima teaches, among other things, about terrorism and counter-terrorism as a social construct, gendered Islamophobia and embodied Islam, and the theoretical frameworks we can use to understand such issues. Fatima is a member of the MCYS Steering Committee. See Fatima's youth-related  and full profile.

Samuel is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics with expertise in Forensic Linguistics. Prior to joining Manchester Metropolitan University in 2014, Samuel held lectureships in linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire and Newman University, and held research posts at Lancaster University and Aston University. His research primarily explores the language of young victims of serious crime. In particular, his research explores how children disclose serious crimes (particularly sexual abuse) to both trusted adults and peers, and how they talk about their experiences of crime (e.g. living with domestic violence). See Samuel's full profile.

You can hear Dr Samuel Larner discuss his work, on our MCYS podcast.

Daniel is an interdisciplinary researcher focused on youth justice. He has worked in the field of criminology for over 14 years and has co-founded several organisations working with children. Previously, he was a police officer and a research analyst at the UK Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board. He is the Chair of Trustees at The Seaver Foundation and is currently co-leading a study exploring children’s understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic. Daniel has published on topics such as children’s rights, social justice, looked after children (LAC), children not in education, employment, or training (NEET), and military-connected children. His current research centres on the construction of the child in youth justice and international comparative approaches to youth rule breaking. This includes an interrogation of the colonial legacies in youth justice in England and Wales, USA, Japan, and Ghana, and the role of youth offending services as community-oriented justice centres. In collaboration with colleagues in Japan, he is exploring the context and views of youth justice practitioners in England and Japan. Full Profile

Caitlin works at the intersection of Youth Studies and Refugee and Migration Studies, with a particular focus on the lived experiences of refugee-background young people in the UK and Australia. Much of her research is collaborative, utilising creative and participatory approaches to produce research with young people, their communities, and the organisations and institutions that serve them. Caitlin has published on a wide range of topics relating to refugee-background youth migration, transnationalism, integration, and belonging, as well as participatory and arts-based methods. She has also co-produced many non-traditional research outputs with young people, including exhibitions, videos, zines, and practice resources. Caitlin is a member of the editorial board of Qualitative Research journal and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. See Caitlin's Youth-related publications and full profile.

Melanie is a specialist in British social and cultural history whose published areas include the history of pawnbroking and working-class credit, women’s social networks, gossip and leisure in working-class communities, and regional identities. Her research in the last decade has turned to focus on the history of childhood and youth in the modern era and projects which have a strong community-facing focus through involvement in collaborative engagement work with young people and local communities. Her most recent books include Being Boys:Youth, Leisure and Identity in the Inter-War Years (Manchester University Press, 2012) and Making Youth: A History of Youth in Modern Britain (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). See Melanie's youth-related publications and full profile.

Alex joined Manchester Metropolitan University as a Lecturer in Creative Writing in January 2018, teaching on the Writing for Children and Young Adults route of our MFA and MA in Creative Writing. See Alex's youth-related publications and full profile.

Jodie is a critical criminological researcher whose research interests are situated within the areas of gender, the social construction of masculinity and femininity, youth justice, restorative justice and anti-carceral feminism. Focusing on the experiences of girls and young women involved in the youth justice system, her doctoral research has drawn critical attention to the gendered nature of shame and stigma operating in Restorative Justice conferencing and the gender-blind policy and practice underpinning Restorative Justice interventions used with girls who offend. Her current research forms the basis for her continued engagement in research on gender and justice and explores feminist anti-carceral alternatives to youth justice responses to girls in conflict with the law. Jodie is the author of Gender, Power and Restorative Justice: A feminist critique. She has also published her research findings in internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals such as Youth Justice and Critical and Radical Social Work: An international journal. In addition to her academic scholarship, Jodie has also undertaken practitioner roles at Catch 22 Pan-Merseyside child exploitation service, Cheshire West, Halton and Warrington Youth Offending Service and Circles of Support and Accountability. Full profile

Prior to joining MMU, Andrea worked in local government for twenty-two years, in the last thirteen as a middle manager, providing strategic support for children social care services, including the Youth Offending Service and Children and Adult Safeguarding Boards. Andrea used a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods, community engagement & consultation with key stakeholders to inform evidence-based practice, as well as developing and implementing performance management and quality assurance frameworks and reporting mechanisms. Andrea completed a postgraduate MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice in October 2020, undertaking her dissertation on Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE), incorporating a multi-disciplinary approach using semi-structured interviews to exploring the dichotomous themes of victims and perpetrators. Andrea is currently supporting the MCYS UKRI funded study on the impact of Covid-19 on the youth justice system (YJS) aiming to understand the implications the pandemic has had on the YJS and the vulnerable children involved in it.

Lucy is a critical oral historian with interests in the themes of youth conflict and post-conflict experience, children’s wellbeing, resilience and agency, and youth politics and resistance. Her doctoral research offered an inter-disciplinary analysis of the everyday impacts of political violence for children and young people who grew up in armed struggle in Northern Ireland and the subjective legacies of these experiences in the ‘post-conflict’ present. Lucy’s research is driven by a wish to re-centre young people’s voices and agency in key political and scholarly debates. She has previously published on representations of children’s agency in popular culture, youth conflict experience and memory, and oral history theory and practice. Beyond the academy, she is experienced in oral history training for community and public purposes, with a focus on the creation of ‘living histories’ of the everyday.