Useful Resources

Research into Youth Leadership

The Eric Frank Trust co-funded a PhD student – Rosie Austin – based at the Department of Geography, Loughborough University. Her research explored experiences and understandings of youth leadership for both young people and adults. The PhD project focused upon spaces of non-formal learning within the UK and drew upon the case-study of the UK Scout Association’s Young Leaders Scheme (YLS).

Rosie’s project sits within a wider context of a shifting social and economic landscape for young people to navigate. Certain attributes and skills – including ‘leadership’ – are currently framed as key for young people to secure in order to manage successful transitions to adulthood. Rosie sought to critically engage with these ideas to better understand constructions of leadership discourses and how leadership is understood by young people. Indeed, in the academic literature to date, much of the focus on this topic is from an adult perspective. This PhD project hosted original fieldwork with young people engaged in YLS to understand their experiences of leadership development.

Rosie’s project report ‘Geographies of Youth Leadership: Volunteering and the Young Leaders Scheme in the UK Scout Association’ can be downloaded here.