Youthful delinquencies: crisis, marginality and resistance

The deadline for 2012 Doctoral College Studentships has now passed.

The Brighton Doctoral College is pleased to welcome applications from self-funded or externally sponsored students for programmes of research in this or a closely related area, beginning from September 2012. Applications are welcome from students wishing to study full time or part time, and applications are welcome from students in employment who have the support of their employers.

• Based in the Faculty of Health and Social Science
• Supervisors: Professor Peter Squires; Professor John Lea.

Application deadline

The university cannot guarantee that students can start at their requested date unless deadlines are met.

• UK/EU students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 August, for January entry it is the 1 November and for May it is the 1 March.
• International students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 June, for January entry it is the 1 September and for May it is the 1 January.

Apply now.

The Crime, Resistance and Security (CRA$) research group at Brighton has a substantial track record of research in the area of youthful deviancy, criminalisation (including ASB management), and community safety and youthful struggles and resistance strategies.

This work dates back to the mid-1990s, involves a core group of six to seven staff and has been reflected in several significant research projects and commissions on young people and ASB, as well as young people, gangs and peer groups, weapon possession and use, gender, identity and violence, policing, protest and ‘rioting’ and in all of these areas we are actively seeking research studentship proposals (see our research outputs below). We are also interested in proposals exploring the precarious and ‘risky’ worlds of adolescence and the forms of security, surveillance or discipline and social control to which young people are increasingly subjected.  We have eight authored, co-authored or edited books in these areas as well as contributions to several more and dozens of academic articles.  Most recently the research team obtained a ‘Connected Communities’ research grant to explore issues of ‘youthful disconnection’ deviance and resistance from the Arts & Humanities Research Council and two successful PhD completions have recently been achieved in this area.   

Members of the research/supervision team have a wide range of research and supervision experience and enthusiasm for methodological innovation and interdisciplinary approaches drawing upon more cultural, ethnographic and/or psycho-social understandings of marginal/persecuted identities (including questions of vulnerability, fear, perceptions of crime, or studies addressing behavioural motivations or consequences).

Accordingly, the Crime, Resistance and Security research group is well placed to support research students working in this area to build upon our existing academic strengths while develop the academic profile.

The lead supervisors would (provisionally) be Peter Squires, Professor of Criminology and Public Policy or Professor John Lea (Visiting Professor in Criminology). Additional supervision/support would be provided by other colleagues working whose academic interests are featured in the publications referred to on our website. Applicants should hold undergraduate/postgraduate applied social sciences experience; criminology, sociology of deviance is preferred.

References

Young People and Community Safety: Inclusion, Risk, Tolerance and Disorder, (Squires & Measor) Aldershot, Ashgate Publishers. 2000;  Rougher Justice:  Young People and Anti-social Behaviour (Squires & Stephen),  Willan,  Publishing 2005;  Community Safety: Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice (Squires ed), The Policy Press, Bristol.  June 2006;  ASBO Nation: Criminalizing Nuisance in Contemporary Britain (Squires ed. 2008).  The Policy Press; Street Weapons Commission:  Guns, Knives and Street Violence - Final Report.  Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.  (Squires et al) Kings College, London.  Crime, Anti-Social Behaviour and Schools (Martin et al.), Palgrave 2011;  Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality (ed., Lea & Squires, 2012).  Contributions to: Youth in Crisis: Gangs, Territoriality and Violence (Ed. Goldson, 2011); Children Behaving Badly, (ed. Barter & Berridge, 2011); O’Dell & Leverett (ed.) Working with Children and Young People: Co-constructing Practice (O’Dell & Leverett (ed.)

Find out more about research at the University of Brighton.