Duties

• Senior Research Fellow in the Education Research Centre

Research interests

• Young people’s cultures, inside and outside the classroom, and in relation to ‘official’ school cultures
• Cultural studies approaches to formal and informal learning; pedagogies, including media in sex and health education
• Student / youth voice, citizenship and participation
• “Creative” research methods for accessing (young people’s) perspectives
• Reflexive (including psychoanalytically-informed) approaches to data collection and analysis
• Critical approaches to public discourses and policy on the “sexualisation” and “commercialization” of childhood

Biography

Sara Bragg is Senior Research Fellow in the Education Research Centre. She was previously a Research Councils UK Academic Fellow in Child and Youth Studies at the Open University, UK, and worked at the University of Sussex and the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London.

She studied at the universities of Bristol and Sussex and became a Media Studies teacher before studying for her doctorate on ‘Media Violence and Education: A Study of Youth Audiences and the Horror Genre’ with Professor David Buckingham at the Institute of Education, which she completed in 2000.

 Since then, she has worked on a number of projects related to young people, media and sexualisation, and with Professor Michael Fielding investigating youth voice and students as researchers. She has led two research projects into the creative learning programme Creative Partnerships, and also written on ‘creative’ research methods and creative learning.

Research projects

• Jan 2013 - July 2013: Research project for Brighton and Hove Council Youth Service investigating their 1:1 provision assessment.
• May 2009 - Jan 2011: Principal Investigator, ‘An evaluation of the impact and nature of Creative Partnerships programmes on school ethos’ (£95 000, Creativity, Culture and Education)
• June 2009 - Jan 2010: Co-Investigator ‘Sexualised goods aimed at children’, with D. Buckingham, R Willett (Institute of Education), R. Russell (Glasgow Caledonian). (£38 000, Scottish Parliament)
• July 2007 - June 2009: Principal Investigator ‘Youth Voice in the work of Creative Partnerships’ (£129 000 Arts Council England)
• June 2003 - May 2004: Research Fellow, University of Sussex: ‘Factors Influencing the Transfer of Good Practice’, Project Director M. Fielding (DFES)
• June 2003 - June 2005: Research officer, Institute of Education: 'MediaRelate: understanding media images of love, sex and relationships', EU media literacy project with two European partners (£60 000, EU)
• May 2001 - Dec 2002: and April - May 2003: Research Officer, Institute of Education: ‘Children, media and personal relationships’, Project Director D. Buckingham (Advertising Standards Authority, British Board of Film Classification, BBC, Broadcasting Standards Commission and, Independent Television Commission).
• Jan 2001 - June 2002: and January - March 2003: Research Fellow, University of Sussex: ‘Students as Researchers’, Project Director M. Fielding (ESRC Teaching & Learning Research Programme)

Selected Recent Publications

Journal articles

• forthcoming with Buckingham, D., ‘Global concerns, local negotiations and moral selves: contemporary parenting and the ‘sexualisation of childhood’ debate’, Feminist Media Studies
• 2012: ‘Dockside Tarts and Modesty Boards: a review of recent policy on sexualisation’ Children & Society 26: (5)406-412
• 2012: ‘What I heard about Sexualisation: or, conversations with my inner Barbie’ Gender and Education 24 (3) 311-316
• 2012: with Manchester, H. ‘Pedagogies of Student Voice (Pedagogías de la voz del alumnado)’, Revista de Educacion Special Issue on student voice 359 (Sept-Dec) 143-163
• 2011: with Manchester, H. 'Doing it differently: youth leadership and the arts in a creative learning programme' UNESCO Observatory Multi-Disciplinary Research in the Arts. Special Youth Participation Issue: 2:2
• 2011: with Buckingham, D., Russell, R., and Willett, R. 'Too Much, Too Soon? Children, ‘Sexualisation’ and Consumer Culture' Sex Education 11 (3) 279-292
• 2010: ‘Tales of the Classroom: on making media in school’ Media Education Research Journal 1 (2) 31-44
• 2007: '"Student Voice" and governmentality: the production of enterprising subjects?' Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 28 (3): 343-358
• 2007: '"But I already listen to students!": teachers responding to pupil voice', Educational Action Research, 15 (4).
• 2006: 'Like Shakespeare it's a Good Thing': Cultural Value in the Classroom' Media International Australia Special Issue on Media Literacy: Value, Identity, Authority, (eds Bragg, S. Buckingham, D. and Turnbull, S) 120: 130-141

Chapters in books

• forthcoming 2013: ‘“Shameless mums” and universal pedophiles: the sexualization and commodification of children’ in the Routledge Companion to Media and Gender
• 2011: ‘“Now it’s up to us to interpret it”: ‘youth voice’ and visual methods in creative learning and research'. In Researching Creative Learning: Methods and approaches Approaches eds. P. Thomson and J. Sefton-Green, London and NY: Routledge
• 2009: with Buckingham, D. ‘Too much too young? Young People, the Media and Sexual Learning’, in Mainstreaming Sex: the sexualization of Western culture, ed F. Attwood. London and New York: IB Tauris
• 2008: with Buckingham, D.  ‘Scrapbooks as a resource in media research with young people’ in Doing Visual Research with children and young people ed P. Thomson, London: Routledge p114-131
• 2007: ‘"It's not about systems, it's about relationships": building a listening culture in a primary school', in D. Thiessen and A. Cook-Sather (eds.), The International Handbook of Student Experience of Elementary and Secondary School Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 659-80.

Edited collections

• forthcoming 2013: with Buckingham, D. and Kehily, Mary Jane eds. Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming)

Reports

• 2011: with Manchester, H., Creativity, School Ethos and the Creative Partnerships programme. CCE: Newcastle
• 2010: Consulting Young People: a review of the literature 2nd ed.London: Creative Partnerships.
• 2010: with Buckingham, D., Russell, R., and Willett, R. Sexualised Goods Aimed at Children: a report to the Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee Glasgow: Scottish Parliament
• 2009: with Manchester, H., and Faulkner, D. M. Youth Voice in the Work of Creative Partnerships London: Creativity, Culture and Education