Vicky Johnson

Vicky Johnson is Professor of Childhood, Youth and Sustainability and Director of the Centre for Living Sustainability. She has over 20 years of experience leading international teams as a Principal Investigator, complimented by her entrepreneurship and multi-stakeholder engagement in the international NGO sector. Research interests include understanding how marginalised people can be supported as agents of change in rapidly changing environmental, political and cultural contexts. She has developed and published papers on a 'change-scape' approach. This supports inclusive, gender sensitive and child and youth centred research that takes into account intergenerational dynamics in communities and their changing landscapes.

Vicky's skills include carrying out creative and participatory action research processes, large-scale qualitative research, linking theory to policy and practice, and gaining research impact through working in partnership with local researchers, service providers and policy makers. Research training and mentoring includes programmes of knowledge exchange across the global North and South.

Recent research projects include: Mapping Child Rights in Community Driven Development (Wellspring Philanthropic Foundation); Youth Uncertainty Rights (YOUR) World Research with marginalised youth in Ethiopia and Nepal (ESRC-DFID's Poverty Alleviation Fund); Engaging Young Children in Research (across global contexts for the Bernard van Leer Foundation); Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health, with case studies in Africa, Asia and Latin America (IPPF); Education in informal settlements in Nairobi (UN Girls' Education Initiative). She has also led action research processes funded by local and regional authorities and regenerational programmes across the UK. 

Lecturing includes: childhood, youth and global development; children's geographies and the anthropology and sociology of childhood; child and human rights; international education; community animation and development; and research methodologies. PhD completions investigated: the local environmental knowledge of fishers in the UK, and migration, education and childhood in Northern Ethiopia. She currently supervises PhD students working on: resilience in the earthquake region of Nepal; decision-making in migration in a drought prone area of Ethiopia; and philanthropic tourism in sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Johnson is an adviser on collaborative programmes of research including: the Research Expert Forum for the Consortium for Street children, an IFAD funded research programme on rural youth opportunities and DFID funded consortia on harmful children's work in sub-Saharan Africa. She is an Honorary Associate for the Institute of Development Studies and on the Board of the childhood research stream of the European Sociological Association and the Pesticide Action Network.