Young People’s Involvement in Hub67: A Case Study of the Development and Practice of Open Access Youth Work in the Context of the Urban Regeneration of East London

Youth and Community work is a contested profession which, over several decades, has been reduced, challenged and required to adapt to address social and political priorities and emerging concerns around young people. Open Access Youth work, widely valued as ‘traditional’ youth work by many practitioners has faced most criticism and change in favour of target driven, results-based methods. Left thus in professional crisis, questions arise as to whether open access youth work can be meaningfully applied in a contemporary context. This thesis aims to investigate the practice of open access youth work and identify what the contribution of youth and community work is to the improvement of young people’s lives in contemporary urban settings. To determine how youth and community work practices aim to explore the difficulties and challenges experienced by young people, how young people potentially benefit from youth and community work, and how can these benefits be characterised and conceptualised. It explores and assesses how youth and community work contributes to improving the lived experiences of young people in those settings, and how these contributions can be identified. The study is a single case study; Hub67 in Hackney Wick, East London, focussed on the development and delivery of a unique youth and community space, generated as a result of the 2012 Olympic legacy to respond to community needs and concerns for young people during this period. It records, assesses, and critically evaluates the development of Hub67 in three phases; the period leading up to the Games in 2012, immediately following the event and the period in which neighbourhood structures and opportunities were reformed. Thus, it takes a chronological approach to understand the developments and challenges for youth workers, local and national supporting organisations, decision makers and young people. The author has a key role in developing the provision of Hub67, and therefore is both practitioner and researcher. The insider positioning is reflected in the methods, which applies an ethnographic approach bounded within a case study protocol. Multiple data sources were used; ethnographic fieldnotes, interviews, focus groups and minutes of meeting (in and about Hub67). The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The study identified two key themes; Civic engagement and Self-awareness, over the three time periods; and applies Bourdieu’s Concept of habitus, field, capital and doxa to inform how young people perceive and experience social geography, agency and interaction throughout the case study. Social capital, as perceived by Bourdieu, is central to this study which aims to identify the multi-faceted characteristics and qualities of open access youth work and how young people’s lived experiences are impacted by its interventions. The study contributes to the current and historical debates about open access youth work and its place and purpose in urban environments and beyond. The data provides enriching and frustrating questions about youth and community work and raises challenges to new and established youth and community workers in locating themselves and their work in a professional and relevant context as well as to funders, communities and decision makers as to the potential role which open access youth work can play in social and environmental dynamics and tensions. The study identifies the significance of ‘community’ in the foundations of youth work and demonstrates the therapeutic and developmental benefits offered to young people through this

PLATISCITY OF C. ELEGANS GERMLINE STEM CELLS UNDER NUTRITIONAL AND METABOLIC STRESS

Stem cells are integral for tissue maintenance and fertility. Therefore, understanding how stem cells are regulated under stress is imperative. When confronted with acute starvation, stem cells must conserve energy and metabolites to cope with the lack of an external source. Caenorhabditis elegans germline stem cells (GSCs) are an excellent model for studying stem cell properties and regulation as they can divide throughout the life of the organism. While GSCs are an adult stem cell population, their cell cycle structure more closely mimics mouse and human embryonic stem cells with short G1 and long S phases. In this thesis, I report that adult GSCs regulate both the G1 and G2 phases to maintain their unique cell cycle structure. I find that the short G1 is promoted by the metabolic regulator gsk-3. Loss of gsk-3 inhibits S phase entry and progression through transcriptional down-regulation of cdk-2. Since metabolic signaling regulates gsk-3, I propose that controlling G1 progression may allow the cells to buffer metabolic stress. These observations also made me wonder how stem cells would respond to the extreme conditions of acute starvation. Adult GSCs are known to undergo a cell cycle arrest during acute starvation, so I investigated the mechanisms and cellular behaviors underlying this arrest. I find that acute starvation causes a reversible G2 arrest which is independent of the canonical DNA damage signaling arrest. Instead, this reversible G2 arrest is regulated by the Insulin signaling and TOR signaling pathways. Detailed investigation of the TOR signaling axis revealed that the G2 arrest is partially dependent on stress kinase signaling, and is mediated by cdk-1regulation. I find that cdk-1 is both translationally and post-translationally regulated to impose the strong starvation-induced G2 arrest. Together, these data reveal novel paradigms through which adult GSCs maintain tissue homeostasis and regenerate tissues to respond to either chronic metabolic stress or acute nutritional deprivation. Given the cell cycle structure conservation between C. elegans GSCs and mammalian embryonic stem cells, I propose that gap phase regulation may also drive stem cell homeostasis in mouse and human embryonic stem cells in response to environmental and metabolic perturbation

Behind the D.V.M.

"For Dan his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree will be the realization of a life-time ambition as well as the start of a professional career."--Page 6By Maurice Trimmer ('56)

An Experiment in Visual Ethnography

This paper is an output from my attendance at an ESRC-funded ‘Live Sociology’ course at Goldsmiths College, London in 2006. The material here is based on a photography exercise and on discussions that took place during the workshop sessions.This paper discusses a one-day exercise in visual ethnography using a digital camera to take photographs of Deptford in South East London. For me, this represented an experiment in using photography in social research.ESR

Teamwork and Information System Development Effectiveness

The natural organizational form for information systems development (ISD) is the team. One strategy for success in ISD has been to have users involved throughout the systems development cycle in cross-functional teams, in order to achieve an end product more satisfactory to these stakeholders. The effectiveness of these cross-functional information systems development teams (ISDT) in this process is the subject of this research