Public Lecture: Researching Inclusion

The University of Malta’s Department of Youth & Community Studies, Faculty for Social Wellbeing, will be hosting a public lecture, ReSearching Inclusion, with speakers Prof. Shirley Steinberg from the University of Calgary, Canada and Dr Mark Vicars, from Victoria University, Australia.

The lecture is being held at Gateway Building Hall B Msida Campus, on Monday, 14 October between 5.30 and 7pm.

The public lecture will explore the ways in which research could be a productive tool in understanding and empowering various minority groups. A number of theoretical perspectives will be discussed, which would enable the analysis of narratives in a critical and emancipatory man- ner. The lecture will also be exploring the similarities, patterns, contradictions and other divergences of research in social inclusion.

The public lecture will provide reflections on where researchers might go in the future.

Guest Speakers

• Prof. Shirley Steinberg is Research Chair and Professor of Youth Studies at the University of Calgary. She is the author or editor of over 30 books, including the award-winning Contemporary Youth Culture Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia of Boyhood Culture. Prof. Steinberg works with youth and youth scholars internationally. She has recently finished the second edition of Thinking Queer: Sexuality, Culture, and Education and The Critical Youth Studies Reader. As the founder of the newly formed, The International Journal of Critical Youth Studies, she has gathered a global community of researchers, cultural workers and youth, to create a sociocultural network devoted to the study of and with youth. She is internationally recognised as a cultural studies and media theorist. She disseminates much of her research through publications, social media and filmmaking.

• Dr Mark Vicars is a senior lecturer in Literacy in the School of Education at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. Mark has worked as a literacy educator within the compulsory and post- compulsory sectors, in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, England and Australia. An overarching concern of his work is the connectivities between literacy and identity practices in everyday life. In 2011 Mark led a participatory programme researching English language and literacy teacher development in least advantaged schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan region. In 2010, he was awarded the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for pedagogical approaches that motivate, inspire and support socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse students to overcome barriers to learning and to experience and attain success. Mark is past president of the Australian Association for Qualitative Research (AQR) that launched the inaugural Discourse, Power and Resistance Down Under Conference in 2010. Mark is a founding member of the International Institute for Critical Pedagogy and Transformative Leadership; he is co-editor of Creative Approaches to Research Journal, Qualitative Research Journal and The Journal of Asian Critical Education and is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Research and Method in Education, Journal of Education; Research in the Theory and Practice of Education; Global Studies of Childhood Journal and Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education.