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Bio
Pete is a values-driven educator and researcher with an interdisciplinary background in youth work, education and criminology. He has taught in Higher Education for 15 years with an approach rooted in principles of critical pedagogy. He is currently Reader in Criminology at Oxford Brookes University. He has spoken at many national and international conferences including the British and European Societies for Criminology, BERA Youth Studies and Informal Education, and International Outreach Youth Work Conferences in London, Paris, Oslo, Denmark and Brussels.
His research outputs include a book, “Responding to Youth Violence through Youth Work” based on an international research project - The ‘Touch Project’ - that used Participatory Action Research with peer researchers to explore youth work responses to youth violence across 3 countries. He has articles published in journals such as Criminology and Criminal Justice, the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, the Journal of Psychosocial Studies, and Race Ethnicity and Education, and several book chapters, specifically in the areas of psychosocial studies, youth crime, informal education, teaching and learning, masculinity, and race. His work on psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s ‘The Psychoanalysis of Children’ currently has over 35,000 reads on ResearchGate (in the top 1% of articles). In 2018 Pete was awarded an ESRC scholarship to complete a PhD with the University of Manchester. The PhD explored, through in-depth qualitative psychosocial case studies, the relationship between young men involved in violence and older male mentors with a history of criminal or violent activity. The University of Manchester awarded him the University’s Presidents Doctoral Scholar Award, recognising the exceptional quality and potential impact of his PhD research in the field of criminology. He is currently under contract with Palgrave Macmillan to produce a book focused on Religious Belief, Identity and Violent Extremism. In recent years Pete has become increasingly interested in the issue of gender- based violence, especially as it manifests in schools, in the light of recent controversies surrounding the influence of figures such as Andrew Tate on young men. Pete’s work in this area has led him to be asked to be an expert panel member on an event organised by the National Youth Agency entitled “Breaking Stereotypes: Navigating Misogyny with Young Men”. Pete and a female colleague have also developed and delivered a pilot programme in a school (‘Harm Free Futures’) that seeks to engage positively with concerns regarding gender-based abuse and violence (GBAV) in schools.
Reader in Criminology
Reader in Criminology
Oxford Brookes University
Working with The World of the Boy: Examining positioning in a psychosocial response to gender-based violence in schools
In recent years the issue of gender-based abuse and violence amongst young people in schools has come into sharp focus, in part due to the rise and subsequent arrest of social media influencer Andrew Tate. Movements like Everyone’s Invited have sought to offer a space for young women to speak out anonymously about their experiences of sexual and gendered injustice at school. In the often quite fevered debates that such websites have catalysed, there is arguably a danger that teenage boys can be positioned and pathologized as irredeemably deviant. This paper details and explores a response designed to positively address gender-based violence with boys in schools, named ‘Harm Free Futures’. The programme drew on psychosocial theories of violence to foreground how boys and girls psychologically invest in and perform gender norms through the discursive practices in which they engage. We focus on how as facilitators (1 male and 1 female) we sought to position ourselves in relation to those discursive practices in a sex-positive social pedagogic space designed to explore the harm inherent in gender-based abuse and violence. Taking an in-depth qualitative approach, we seek to convey some of the precise detail of the interactions between ourselves as facilitators and a group of 10, year 9 pupils over a 6-week period. The paper shows how our positioning in relation to the boys engendered processes and some outcomes that, if mirrored by teachers and other professionals elsewhere, could have the potential to reduce gender-based violence in schools
Selected Publications:
Harris, P. (2024) “Sport and Crime Reduction” in Lawrence, S., Hill, J. and Mowatt, R. (Eds) Routledge Handbook of Sport, Leisure and Justice. Abingdon: Routledge https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003389682-34
Harris, P., Seal, M. (2023). “Youth Work and Gang Violence Reduction”. In: Andell, P. and Pitts, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_23
Harris, P. (2020) “‘Just give up the ball’: In search of a third space in relationships between male youth workers and young men involved in violence”. Criminology and Criminal Justice. 22 (2) https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820933929
Harris, P. (2020) “‘I needed to go backwards before going forwards’: A psychosocial case study exploring the interweaving of desistance from violent offending and professional youth worker identity formation”. Journal of Psychosocial Studies. Vol 13:2 pp 193-208 https://doi.org/10.1332/147867320X15907719497742
Harris, P. (2019) “Down with the kids? Examining the male youth worker as role model and mentor to young men involved in violence”. Youth and Policy, April 2019. Available at: https://www.youthandpolicy.org/articles/down-with-the-kids/ [Accessed 16/10/24]
Harris, P. Haywood, C. and Mac an Ghaill, M. (2017) ‘Higher Education, de-centred
Harris, P. and Seal, M. (2014) “It’s all about the Conversation” in Seal, M. and Frost, S. (eds) Philosophy in Youth and Community Work. Lyme Regis: Russell House.
Conference papers (selected)
Harris, P. and Cutler, H. (2024) “Working with The World of the Boy: Examining positioning in a psychosocial response to gender-based violence in schools” Joint Conference: Association for Psychosocial Studies and Association for Psychoanalysis Culture and Society, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, 17/6/24
Harris, P. (2023) “Responding to Gender Based Abuse and Violence” Centre for Community and Social Justice Conference 2023, Birmingham Newman University 16/6/23 (Convenor and presenter)
Harris, P. (2022) “Sport and Violence Reduction” Centre for Community and Social Justice Launch and Inaugural Conference 2022 Birmingham Newman University 26/4/22 (Convenor and presenter)
Harris P. (2019) “He’s shown me the road”? A psychosocial interrogation of the male youth worker as role model to young men involved in violence. A Youth Studies perspective on the discourse of youth violence: BERA. Nottingham Trent University 24/6/19
Harris, P. (2018) “Engaging with young people in violent subcultures” Gozo Youth Conference, Malta 14/4/18
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