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Jenny Parkes is Professor of Education, Gender and International Development, based in the Centre for Education and International Development at IOE.
What is the focus of your research and what benefits do you hope your insights will bring?
My research focuses on violence, gender and inequalities in young people’s lives.
Currently, I am working on a longitudinal, cohort study on Contexts of Violence in Adolescence (CoVAC). This is an interdisciplinary project in collaboration with Raising Voices, an NGO specialising in violence prevention in schools in Uganda, the Ugandan MRC/UVRI, and LSHTM. Learning from young people, we hope to generate insights into policies, practices and contextual relationships that can support violence prevention with young people as they move from childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood.
Another focus of my research involves collaborations with policy makers, working to build and use research evidence to improve policies and practices addressing gender violence in and around schools.
What attracted you to join IOE?
Back in 2006, when I took up my first lectureship position at IOE, it was inspiring to be able to contribute to an innovative MA programme that uniquely combined scholarship from gender studies, development studies and education.
Over the years since then, the programme has grown and flourished, attracting students and professionals around the world concerned with the contribution of education to equalities and social justice.
What's the most important thing you've learned from your students about the subject you teach?
Our students bring an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience, so that I am constantly learning from them about the diversity of lived experiences of gender, how inequalities and discrimination operate in formal and informal education spaces, and about their creativity and commitment to acting to contest intersecting inequalities and injustice.
What do you most enjoy about your role?
I’ve been privileged to be able to work with teams of talented researchers, students, global and grassroots activist organisations in research and teaching, and greatly value the continuous opportunities for learning and knowledge generation within and through these collaborations.
