The Youth Research Platform is a policy-oriented research centre subsidized by the Flemish government. It is an interdisciplinary cooperation between three academic research groups: Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy (Ghent University), Research group ‘Tempus Omnia Revelat’ (Department of Sociology – Free University of Brussels), Research Line Youth Criminology, Leuven Institute of Criminology (Leuven University). The Youth Research Platform has been assigned three main tasks:

1. inventory of existing youth research,
2. the construction of a survey, which recurrently monitors the lifeworld, conditions and activities of Flemish youth (“the JOP-monitor’ and the ‘JOP-schoolmonitor’) and,
3. the development of an international dimension

The Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy contributes to the inventorisation of youth research, in particular pedagogical and social work research concerning youth, in an online database. Within the JOP-monitor the department mainly focuses on the study of (the policy for) young people in relation to the three main educational contexts (family, school and leisure) and the formal and informal support. The department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy takes up the coordination of the Youth Research Platform. The coordinator is also the national correspondent for The European Knowledge Centre on Youth Policy and is member of the Pool of European Youth Researchers (PEYR).

Promoter(s): Prof. dr. Maria De Bie (promotor-coördinator), dr. Lieve Bradt (project-coordinator)
Researcher(s)/contact: Annelore Van der Eecken, Robin Kemper
Website: http://www.jeugdonderzoeksplatform.be/en