Tania has a professional background is in youth, community and play work. Her research is on youth services, and how policy and politics interact with professional practice and young people’s lives. Tania teaches in the areas of informal and community education, education policy, child and youth studies, and interdisciplinary social science for social change. She is the Post-Graduate Research Lead for the School of Education, Communication and Society, responsible for our vibrant community of PhD student researchers. Her book, Grassroots Youth Work: Policy, Passion and Resistance in Practice, was published by Policy Press in 2016.

Research

Tania's primary research area is the policy and practice of children's and young people's services, with a focus on critical, radical, transformatory and anti-oppressive youth work. She worked with Louise Doherty to research how young people and youth workers experience evaluation and outcomes frameworks in a challenging policy context, and how evaluation and accountability can better serve communities.

Her book, Grassroots Youth Work: Policy, Passion and Resistance in Practice (Policy Press 2016), drew on a three year qualitative research project investigating how youth workers experienced a working context dominated by managerialism and marketisation in times of austerity. Tania is interested in young people's and children's experiences of education and everyday life in a challenging and inequitable policy context.

Tania draws on critical theory from a number of areas including the sociology of education policy, intersectional feminism, anarchism, anti-racist activism, and activist scholarship. She is committed to co-creating and sharing her research with practitioners, young people, decision makers and others, including through dialogical workshops, non-academic writing, and collaboration with artists and filmmakers.

Research interests

• The policy and practice of children's and young people's services, particularly youth work and play work.
• The perspectives and felt experiences of grassroots youth workers in challenging policy contexts.
• Critical, anti-oppressive, alternative and hopeful approaches to youth services and education, including detached and street-based youth work, adventure play, and radical youth work.
• Critical, youth-centred and bottom-up approaches to evaluation, outcomes and impact measurement, and how evaluation and accountability can better serve communities.
• Children's and young people's experiences of education, community and everyday life in a challenging and inequitable policy context.

Teaching

Tania leads the Post-Graduate Research Training Programme in the School of Education, Communication and Society. She was involved in leading the MA Education, Policy and Society for many years, and teaches on modules associated with this MA including Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Social Context of Education, as well as supervising MA dissertations. She teaches on the BA Social Sciences programme, which she was involved in planning and setting up, in particular co-convening the module Learning out of School. She also contributes more widely to teaching throughout the School, including teaching related to qualitative research methods, play, children, and youth.

PhD supervision

Tania supervises doctoral students and is happy to supervise in the following areas:

• Youth work, community work and playwork
• Critical, democratic, anti-oppressive, radical and/or environmental education.

Further information

For publications and further information, please see Tania's research profile on PURE.