Professor David Ashton is an expert in many fields including labour markets, national systems of education and training, national approaches to workforce development and high performance work organisations. Professor Ashton has published extensively in these fields and completed major research in these areas. He has taught in the UK and internationally and in the late 1980s established the Centre for Labour Market Studies, a research and teaching centre at the University of Leicester.
Professor Ashton holds an Honorary Professorship at Cardiff University and an Emeritus Professorship at the University of Leicester.
He has provided consultancy services for various government departments in the UK such as BIS, Scottish Government, Cabinet Office and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Internationally he has advised government organisations in South Africa, European Union, Singapore, and Malta, as well as global organisations such as the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation.
Professor Ashton involvement as the Principle Investigator and author of Young Adults in the Labour Market (Ashton and Maguire, 1983) will enable him to give invaluable advice as a member of the Advisory Group for UK Youth Research‘s ESRC funded project. Part of this study makes use of the original data from Young Adults in the Labour Market that Professor Ashton donated for reuse.
David has said that the UK Youth Research‘s secondary analysis of the questionnaires will “reveal new insights into the situation of young people in the 1980s, but of more significance it will reveal the distinctive features of the situation facing young people on the periphery of the globalised labour markets of the 21st century. This will undoubtedly add to our academic knowledge but equally important it has the potential of making huge contribution to the political debate on how to combat the adverse effects of economic transformation of young adults”.
Professor Ken Roberts is Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. His major research area throughout his career has been youth life stage transitions. After 1989 he coordinated a series of research projects in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. His current research is UK based, and is into the development of educational and vocational aspirations during secondary education, and the role of higher education in social mobility and class re-formation in Britain. Professor Roberts’ latest books are Key Concepts in Sociology (2009), Youth in Transition: Eastern Europe and the West (2009), Class in Contemporary Britain (2011), and Sociology: An Introduction (2012).
He had a number of editorial roles with the Journal of Education and Work, World Leisure Journal, Journal of Youth Studies, Society and Leisure and the Leisure Studies.
Professor Roberts was the Principal Investigator and author of The Changing Structure of Youth Labour Markets (Roberts, Dench and Richardson, 1985) . His contribution as a member of the Advisory Group for ‘The making of the precariat’ is very much welcomed .
Professor Roberts has given his support and approval for the reuse of his original dataset and pleased that the ‘data can make a further contribution to knowledge 30 years hence’.
UK YOUTH RESEARCH 