During the last years, several VUB research groups have built up research expertise on children and adolescents at social risk in a parallel way. While these studies were conducted independently from each other within different disciplines, all research groups have moved from research about youngsters at social risk to research with children and adolescents, generating knowledge and insights from the perspectives of the children and adolescents themselves. Children and adolescents became more and more involved as active research participants whose voices are taken into consideration in the research process. Involving children and adolescents at social risk in research is both methodologically and theoretically challenging. In order to further explore methodological and theoretical aspects of this topic, an Interdisciplinary Research Program (IRP) was submitted, and obtained (“Voicing Youth at Social Risk”).

"Voicing youth at social risk” started in October 2016 as an interdisciplinary research platform bringing together different research groups of the VUB from Social Sciences (IDNS - Interpersonal, Discursive and Narrative Studies), Law (FRC - Fundamental Rights and Constitutionalism), Criminology (CRiS - Crime & Society), Sports Education (SASO- Sport & Society) and Teacher Training.

Our objectives:

1. the development of rights-based and empowering research methods
2. the implementation of rights-based and empowering prevention and intervention practices for children and youngsters at social risk.