University of Birmingham Student (Alumni) Papers: Papers of Janet Batsleer

Papers of and relating to the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies during the period Janet Batsleer was a postgraduate student there in the late 1970s, particularly focusing on research of the English Studies sub-group 1978-1979 and including research papers for the CCCS pamphlet on women and fascism, 'Breeders for Race and Nation: Women and Fascism in Britain Today', but also wider connections between members of the Centre and other groups concerned with literature and politics at the time

Janet Batsleer studied English at Cambridge and was a research student at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. She worked as a youth and community worker for ten years before taking up a post as Lecturer in Youth and Community Work at Manchester Polytechnic in 1986. She has taught and conducted research in youth and community work since then, and was part of the team which established a Women's Studies M.A. at Manchester Metropolitan University which ran successfully during the 1990s. She is currently Principal Lecturer in Youth and Community Work and is responsible for the development of BA and MA programmes in youth and community work and research projects in this field.

Her research has focussed on anti-racist and feminist approaches to youth work; on the theory and practice of informal education in youth work settings; and on alternative education traditions and the resources they offer to people whose lives are conducted at the margins of the mainstream. She has published on informal groupwork responses to young people who self-harm; on groupwork with South Asian women survivors of domestic violence; on arts-based practice with young men who are on the edge of the sex industry; as well as on lesbian, gay,queer and trans youth work. She is currently working on a new edition of 'Working with Girls and Young Women in Community Settings' (Ashgate 1996) which presents a feminist-inspired community-based approach to informal education for and with girls, linked to the Feminist Webs oral history initiative. She has completed project evaluations with The Blue Room, on the place of creativity in responses to young men who sell sex, and with Groundwork UK on developing strategies to increase the diversity of groups with whom they engage, including offering resources to people with long-term mental health difficulties, lesbian and gay communities, and to small minority ethnic communities in predominantly white areas.

She is interested in how the education system could change in response to understanding the experiences of people who do not do well in it currently. She is interested in the resources offered by critical social and cultural theory and research to this project of understanding and change.

Source: http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/resstaff/profile.php?surname=Batsleer&name=Janet Accessed August 2013

Open, access to all registered researchers

Presented by Janet Batsleer, August 2013

Please see https://calmview.bham.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=XUSS90&pos=1 for more information

Catalogued by Kieran Connell, December 2013, as part of AHRC funded project 'The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: connected collaboration, connected communities and connected impact. Description prepared in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; and National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. The Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Special Collections holds research papers of other former members of staff of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies as well as a small departmental archive of the Centre. Please contact Special Collections for further information