Liz Ackerley, Geography and Environment, University of Manchester (2017 Cohort)

From 2018-2022 I carried out a PhD project entitled ‘Young People’s Activism in Times of Austerity’. My project was a CASE studentship, meaning it was designed in collaboration with an organisation, in my case RECLAIM, a Manchester-based youth-informed equalities organisation, with the aim of undertaking research to support and inform their work. At the time of applying for the PhD I was working as a research assistant at the University of Bedfordshire at what is now called the Safer Young Lives Research Centre. There my role involved undertaking applied social research primarily related to young people’s participation in service design and delivery. Having seen the value of research and practice working together, as well as having a longstanding interest in and experience of working with young people across a range a contexts including education and campaigning, a collaborative research project with a brilliant youth organisation really appealed to me.

In line with feminist and participatory research principles I knew right from the start that I wanted to prioritise ensuring the findings were shared first with young people and staff at RECLAIM, and then more widely to amplify young people’s campaigning and activism work, and to highlight the challenges facing youth organisations in an austere context. The study involved ethnographic and participatory methods and for a couple of years prior to the formal research period, and for a year during fieldwork, I was very involved with the organisation attending events, meetings, workshops, youth sessions and more. I was therefore able to feedback what I was hearing and learning about the organisation and young people’s activism throughout the fieldwork period in a variety of different ways. This was mainly done through ongoing conversations with young people and staff, however I also held specific feedback sessions in which I presented initial findings based on early analysis to check that these made sense and were in line with the experiences and thoughts of those who had taken part in the research. These processes felt important in terms of sharing the research and findings to inform RECLAIM’s work, but also to involve a level of ‘co-analysis’ to ensure the final thesis was an accurate representation and synthesis of all the many conversations, workshops, interviews, and observations that took place throughout the PhD.

Despite these opportunities throughout the PhD to share ongoing findings with those who had taken part, when I finished writing the PhD and submitted I was, like many, out of my funded time, burnt out and tired, and frustrated that I hadn’t had time to create a full summary of the research to share both with young people and staff at RECLAIM and more widely. I am therefore very grateful to be currently working as a research associate where 1) I have a line manager who is very supportive of me making time to work on sharing my PhD findings, and 2) working in an academic context means I am eligible for small grants to fund dissemination work. I therefore applied for a small pot of funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account to fund illustrations, design and printing of a short summary booklet of my research findings. The ESRC IAA fund was ideal for this piece of work as it has a very short turnaround time, meaning I found out very quickly that my application was successful, and there were minimal reporting expectations of a short 1200 word report once the grant was spent.

The summary report I produced is split into three sections, detailing the key findings from my research. These relate to young people’s activism, intergenerational relationships of care and solidarity, and challenges facing a youth engagement organisation in an austere context. The report concludes with a set of key points and recommendations. I was initially daunted by the challenge of turning an 80,000 word thesis into a 2000 word summary, and sought support with this from my main supervisor, Sarah Marie Hall, who kindly shared with me some examples of research summaries she had produced. It also helped to think about what the key things were that I wanted to share, and to work mainly from the conclusion of my thesis, rather than trying to summarise the entire thesis. Turning academic work into an accessible and engaging summary designed to be read by a wide audience is also a challenge, and one that I sought support with from a range of sources including friends and colleagues who kindly read early versions of the report, and staff at RECLAIM. Sharing the summary with the staff team at RECLAIM before the final version was published was important in terms of checking they were happy with the findings to be made public in this way, and also to get invaluable feedback on the tone and style of the writing to ensure this would be accessible to a wide audience.

I am really grateful for all the support I received in the process of creating a summary booklet from my PhD, and to everyone who has taken the time to engage and download the report. RECLAIM also very kindly hosted a launch event of the report, which you can watch here. In the recording of the event I share the key findings of the report and Mel and Bonnie, two brilliant young people who have worked with RECLAIM for several years and were integral to the research, share their thoughts on young people’s activism, campaigning and the youth sector. The report, and the recording of the launch event, highlight how youth work spaces are vital to supporting young people to develop critical thinking skills, impacting their sense of worth as young people and feelings of capability and power to fight for social change. However, one of the most important, but sadly not surprising, findings from my research is that youth work spaces are and have been facing significant threats from a challenging economic climate in the context of years of austerity and current rising costs and further cuts to vital services. RECLAIM recently launched a fundraiser to support their work as the organisation is at risk of closure. The fundraiser has now closed, but if you can donate to support the development of more youth-led projects for working-class young people and to push for a class-inclusive society please do via their Just Giving page.

Final thoughts:

• Collaborative research is a process and opportunities to share findings can be built into different stages of a research project in different ways.
• If you are at an academic institution post-PhD it’s worth finding out who the best people to talk to about funding are. For example, your head of department or departmental research lead might be able to put you in contact with those in the funding office to give you more information about different pots of funding for which you might be eligible.
• Sharing research findings can be great opportunities for connecting with others who share similar concerns and interests and for me led to some really interesting conversations and collaborations.
• Sharing the research findings in this way enabled me to create a resource that can help to support and amplify RECLAIM’s work, which for me was the key aim of my PhD.