Young people, youth work, social inclusion, citizenship, youth justice, Europe

Howard Williamson has held academic research grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, various government departments and the European Commission, and practice grants from the National Lottery Charities Board for his ‘cottage project’ in Snowdonia, working with unemployed and excluded young people.

He has managed and conducted research projects for local, national and European organisations. His research work has been predominantly on youth issues, notably concerning youth work and youth training, but it has also addressed juvenile justice and youth crime, drug misuse, special needs housing, inter-agency partnerships, mini-enterprise in schools, local economic development and training for enterprise in Europe.

His primary research interests are around youth policy, citizenship and social exclusion, and the role of youth work in the personal development and social integration of young people.

Since the 1970s, he has conducted over 70 research studies on young people.  Relatively recently, this has included: action research with schools around alternative key stage 4 curricula, an evaluation of the Home Office On Track initiative, a formative evaluation of a police-led schools curriculum on drugs, crime and personal safety; and a European funded collaborative research project on youth behaviour in public space (with research institutions in Austria, Estonia and Finland).  

He co-ordinated the Council of Europe youth policy reviews of 21 countries between 1997 and 2016, and co-edited the seven-volume History of Youth Work in Europe series.  

His most significant research study, however, remains that of the ‘Milltown Boys’, a group of young men he first studied, through participant observation methods, 50 years ago.  His first book about them (Five Years, National Youth Bureau 1981) covered their teenage lives.  He interviewed them when they were 40 (The Milltown Boys Revisited, Berg 2004) and again when they were 60 (The Milltown Boys at Sixty: The origins and destinations of young men from a poor neighbourhood, Routledge 2021).  

He has recently published other books on European youth policy (with Max Fras and Zara Lavchyan: About Time! A reference manual for youth policy from a European perspective, Council of Europe Publishing 2021), the disruption of youth transitions to autonomy on account of the COVID-19 pandemic (with Ewa Krzaklewska, Amy Stapleton and Frank Tillmann: Transitions on Hold? How the Covid-19 pandemic affected young people's transitions to autonomy, Council of Europe and European Commission 2023), and an Advanced Introduction to Youth Studies (with James Côté, Edward Elgar 2022). His most recent publication, launched during Belgium's presidency of the Council of the European Union is Taking Stock - Where are we now? Youth work in contemporary Europe (Flemish Government 2024).

Currently he is working on a manual on youth work strategies across Europe, together with colleagues from Germany, Romania, Malta, Armenia and Hungary.