Understanding Youth Roles
Siobhan McEvoy-Levy explores the fluid and socially constructed nature of the youth category, typically defined by international organizations as ages 15-29. She outlines four main perceptions of youth: protected pre-citizens needing nurturing, threats requiring control, social and economic assets, and agents of change. Each perception impacts youth policy and their societal roles. McEvoy-Levy stresses the importance of viewing youth as complex individuals capable of embodying multiple roles at different times. She calls for inclusive discourses that shape both youth policy and self-perception, recognizing young people as active participants in various political and social processes.
This video is part of the Center’s series on Collective & Human Security.
Speaker Biography
Siobhan McEvoy-Levy is the director of the Desmond Tutu Peace Lab (DTPL) and professor of political science and peace and conflict studies at Butler University, in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Originally from Northern Ireland, McEvoy-Levy earned a BA Hons degree First Class in politics and English literature from Queen’s University, Belfast, and MPhil and PhD degrees in international relations from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is a certified Healing-Centered Youth Engagement Practitioner (from Flourish Agenda) and is currently working towards teacher certification in mindfulness meditation with the Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults.
As director of the DTPL McEvoy-Levy organizes campus dialogues, speakers, study tours and community partnerships that help mentor and develop the next generation of researchers, educators and activists focused on peace and justice issues.
She is the author and editor of numerous articles, books and book chapters on young people’s politics and peacebuilding roles and has coauthored with young people and conducted interviews and focus groups with young people, youth workers and youth policy specialists in the United States, Palestine/Israel and Northern Ireland. Her work focuses on how young people conceptualize violence and peace, participate in (everyday) peacebuilding, the importance of bringing a youth lens to the multidimensional challenges of political transitions, and the motives, contexts, capabilities and impacts of children and youth as complex perpetrators and victims of violence and as resisters of violence and oppression through nonviolent protests, everyday activism and formal political advocacy.
