BERA Sexualities & Youth Studies SIG present:

Sexualities, youth work & informal education.
Manchester Metropolitan University, Didsbury Campus.
Friday 11th November
10.30-5pm

Over the past decade or so, there has been increased public concern on the need to further regulate young people’s (hetero)sexualities.  Recent media and policy interest in North American, Australian and UK contexts has focused on the perils of commercialisation, and the perceived problematic premature sexualisation of children and young people – particularly, girls (see Bailey, 2011 and Papadopoulos, 2010).  At the same time, schools and youth services have become increasingly focused on the issue of homophobic bullying, whilst much sex and relationship education remains framed around a compulsory and normative heterosexuality.
In addition, at this time of ‘austerity’, youth services face severe cuts to young people’s sexual health services. Within schooling,  Nadine Dorries’  has called for abstinence only, sex and relationship education for girls. It is within this  turbulent climate that we want to explore research, policy, and practices relating to the complexities and challenges of researching and developing  youth and education policy and practice on gender and sexualities issues with young people.
We are keen to bring scholars and practitioners together from: youth work, education studies, youth studies, sociology, social policy and social work to explore this area further in this one day event.
We seek papers/ seminars and workshops that potentially address one or more of the following themes:

Sexuality, sex and relationship education and in/formal education;
Understandings of popular culture and moral panics focusing on youth sexualities;
Young people’s sexual desires and/or practice or understandings;
Discussions of sexuality in youth work,
LGBTQ spaces;
Feminist, LGBT and Queer pedagogy in youth work/informal education practice;
Gender specific spaces;
Young parenthood;
Practice and engagement that counters homo/transphobia and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’;
Investigating the impact of the teenage pregnancy agenda, responding to the current Coalition agenda on sexualisation and abstinence.

Please send suggestions for panels, outline of papers or posters, and a brief biography to  by 24th September 2011 to fiona.cullen@brunel.ac.uk.

For more information about the seminar, email fiona.cullen@brunel.ac.uk or Janet Batsleer at j.batsleer@mmu.ac.uk.