Doherty, Louise and de St Croix, Tania. 2019. The everyday and the remarkable: Valuing and evaluating youth work. Youth & Policy, ISSN 2057-4266
Louise Doherty
Staff details
Position
Programme Convenor and Lecturer, Community Studies
Department
Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies
l.doherty (@gold.ac.uk)
Links
Louise's research interests range from, impact and evaluation to commensality and youth and community work more broadly.
Louise has been teaching at Goldsmiths for over ten years and is a lecturer and programme convenor for the MA Applied Anthropology, Community and Youth Work/Community Development/Community Arts. Louise has an extensive background in youth and community work as a practitioner, artist educator and project manager spanning over twenty years. Louise is dedicated to the continued development of youth and community work practice and has recently been researching the youth impact agenda, focusing on the disconnect between the intrinsic value of youth work as a transformational practice and the incongruent ways in which it is often perceived, measured and evaluated.
Academic qualifications
- MA, Applied Anthropology, Community and Youth Work
- PG. Cert Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
- JNC (professional youth work qualification)
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
- BA (Hons) Fine Art and Design
Teaching and supervision
Louise is the MA Convenor and oversees all pathways. Louise is a lecturer, dissertation supervisor and personal tutor on the MA.
Research interests
As well as current research into impact, evaluation and accountability in youth work, Louise is a visiting researcher at Kings College London and also has an interest in commensality, or practices of food sharing, in relation to youth and community work practice(s) as well as issues of social justice, in particular the undervaluing of types of community focused labour.
Featured publications
2023:
It’s a great place to find where you belong’: creating, curating and valuing place and space in open youth work
This article highlights the distinctive spatiality of open youth work settings, their valuable contribution to young people’s lives, and how they are actively created and curated by those involved.
2022:
Capturing the magic': grassroots perspectives on evaluating open youth work
Youth work’s informal and youth-centred nature raises challenges for evaluation, challenges that are intensified by the growing dominance of measurement, market values and surveillance.
2021:
There’s a cupboard full of pasta! Beyond sustenance: reflections on youth work and commensality
Commensality is an area of inquiry concerned with practices of eating and, in particular, eating at a shared table, here we explore this concept in relation to youth work
2019:
The everyday and the remarkable: Valuing and evaluating youth work
Here we highlight tensions in measuring and evaluating youth work and argue that the way practice is recognised and valued is disconnected from the way it is measured.
Publications and research outputs
Article
de St Croix, Tania and Doherty, Louise. 2024. ‘Capturing the magic': grassroots perspectives on evaluating open youth work. Journal of Youth Studies, 27(4), pp. 486-502. ISSN 1367-6261
de St Croix, Tania and Doherty, Louise. 2023. ‘It’s a great place to find where you belong’: creating, curating and valuing place and space in open youth work. Children's Geographies, 21(6), pp. 1029-1043. ISSN 1473-3285
Doherty, Louise and de St Croix, Tania. 2021. There's a cupboard full of pasta! Beyond sustenance: reflections on youth work and commensality. Concept, 12(3), pp. 1-11. ISSN 1359-1983
Report
Doherty, Louise and de St Croix, Tania. 2022. Valuing Youth Work – Research-informed practical resources for youth workers: Reflecting on the value and evaluation of youth work. Project Report. Centre for Public Policy Research, King’s College London, London.
de St Croix, Tania and Doherty, Louise. 2022. Valuing youth work – Seven-evidence based messages for decision makers on youth work and evaluation. Project Report. Centre for Public Policy Research, King’s College London, London.
Research projects
2018-2022:
Rethinking Impact, Evaluation and Accountability in Youth Work
This qualitative research project investigated how impact tools and processes are experienced and enacted by young people and practitioners in youth work settings.