Durham University, founded in 1832, is the third oldest university in England and has been a leading European centre of learning for 1,000 years. The University is currently ranked a top 5 UK University – 4th in The Sunday Times University Guide 2013, 5th in the Complete University Guide 2013, 5th in The Times Good University Guide 2013, 80th in THE world rankings (2012) and 92nd in the QS world ranking (2012). Study of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Arab countries has a long history through the School of Government and International Affairs (which houses the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World in collaboration with Edinburgh and Manchester Universities) as well as the Al-Sabah programme which undertakes inter-disciplinary research on the Middle East. The School houses the office of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, and has an extensive doctoral research programme on the Middle East (including Arab countries, Iran, Israel and Turkey). There is also a strong European Union group in the school which has a strong research focus on external policy.
Persons involved in the project
Professor Emma Murphy is Director of Research in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. Her research interests include political and economic reform in North Africa/Middle East, state feminism in Tunisia, the structural dimensions of information and communications technologies in the contemporary era, on-line civility and, most recently, the politics of youth in the Arab region. She has one authored and three co-authored books, as well as nearly 40 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She was also Co-I for the £5.2 million UK research council funded Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World. Since 2011 she has led the CASAW-funded Arab Youth and Politics programme, the first workshop of which led to the publication of a themed issue in Mediterranean Politics in which she authored the framing paper “Problematising Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure”.
Dr A. Maria Kastrinou is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. She gained both her BA in Human Sciences and her PhD in Social Anthropology from Durham University, during which time she also became a Doctoral Research Affiliate at the University of Damascus in Syria. Her publications include articles in peer reviewed journals which directly address the challenges of being young in the Arab region, and the complexities of social and cultural navigation. She won numerous postgraduate awards for conference presentations, fieldwork blogs, and innovative research.
The youth policy expertise will be enhanced by the sub-contracted participation of Professor Robert MacDonald, Professor of Sociology and Deputy Director of the Social Futures Institute at Teeside University since 2002. He was the founder of the Youth Policy Programme at Teeside University and is the deputy editor of the Journal of Youth Studies. His publications include eight books and numerous research articles on youth-oriented analysis of social exclusion, enterprise cultures, life-stage transitions, poverty, drugs, class, identity, and worklessness. Over the past fifteen years he has developed the Teeside Studies of Youth Transitions and Social Exclusion, one of the most extensive, long-term and broad-ranging analyses of youth transitions in the UK. This extensive qualitative research has been used as the basis for critical engagement with sociological questions and social policy orthodoxies about the ‘low-pay, no-pay cycle’ and ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’. His books, as author, co-author and editor include: Risky Business? Youth and Enterprise Culture (1991); Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion (1997); Snakes and Ladders (2000); Poor Transitions (2004); and Disconnected Youth? Growing Up in Britain’s Poor Neighbourhoods (2005) .
Main tasks attributed to UDUR
-Leader of WP7
-Partner in WP8 and WP9
