Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor Karen Nairn

Fierce hope and research with young people

About Professor Karen Nairn’s research
Karen’s research is youth-focused. Her current Marsden-funded project focuses on what inspires young people to join others to create social change and the book Youth-led activism in Aotearoa will be published next year. The book is about six youth-led groups working on a range of fronts: honouring indigenous land rights, policies for a zero carbon future, challenging sexual violence and gender-based harassment, rethinking gender and sexuality and what counts as ‘justice’, and addressing social inequalities in Aotearoa. An earlier Marsden-funded project culminated in the book Children of Rogernomics: A neoliberal generation leaves school. That book was about young people coming to adulthood in the wake of New Zealand’s neoliberal reforms, connecting their accounts with the wider social and economic story. Karen introduced a Young Women in Leadership programme for year 12 and is currently researching the programme’s influence on young women when they are in their last year of high school.