Janet Batsleer

I have worked for 30 years in the field of youth and community work, which I have understood as a field of socio-cultural and educative practice. I have contributed to the development of dialogue concerning feminist, anti-racist and other critical approaches in this field of endeavour.

I studied English at Cambridge and was a research student at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, when Professor Stuart Hall was Director. I worked as a youth and community worker for ten years before taking up a post as Lecturer in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Polytechnic in 1986. I have taught and conducted research in youth and community work since then, and was part of the team which established a Women’s Studies MA at Manchester Met which ran successfully during the 1990’s.

My research has focussed on anti-racist and feminist approaches to youth work; on the theory and practice of informal education in youth work settings; on alternative education traditions and the resources they offer to people whose lives are conducted at the margins of the mainstream. So, I have published on informal groupwork responses to young people who self-harm; on groupwork with South Asian women survivors of domestic violence; on arts-based practice with young men who are on the edge of the sex industry; as well as on lesbian, gay, queer and trans youth work. I also published a new edition of Youth Working with Girls and Young Women in Community Settings. A Feminist Perspective (Ashgate 2013) which presents a feminist-inspired community-based approach to informal education for and with girls, linked to the Feminist Webs oral history initiative. I have completed project evaluations with The Blue Room, on the place of creativity in responses to young men who sell sex, and with Groundwork UK on developing strategies to increase the diversity of groups with whom they engage, including offering resources to people with long-term mental health difficulties, lesbian and gay communities, and to small minority ethnic communities in predominantly white areas.