Rick Bowler
BA
Senior Lecturer in BA (Hons) Community and Youth Studies
Location:
Priestman Building. City Campus
Phone: 0191 515 2228 / 3192
Email:
rick.bowler@sunderland.ac.uk
Biography
Rick Bowler is a senior lecturer teaching primarily in the community and youth studies department consisting of the current portfolio of programmes.
Foundation Degree `Working with Young People'.
BA Hons Community and Youth Studies.
Postgraduate Diploma / MA in Career Guidance.
Rick is a member of the department of Social Sciences. He draws upon critical social theory encompassing critical race theory and critical studies on whiteness. His teaching interests are focused on equalities, social justice and the importance of positioning and intersectionality. His teaching interests are focused on equalities, social justice and the importance of positioning and intersectionality. Rick is committed to challenging racism and therefore his work holds a specific lens on 'race' and processes of racialisation in helping students and practitioners learn from their lives to think pedagogically about becoming critical professional workers.
Teaching Areas
Between 1996 and 2003, Rick was chairperson of Young Asian Voices youth project and during that time was elected to the chair of the Bangladeshi Centre Working Group - Sunderland's first BAME led Intercultural Community Centre. He was involved in the feasibility study to establish the regional BAME voluntary sector - BECON. Rick was the chairperson to the Board of Directors of the North of England Refugee Service Ltd (The Regional Refugee Service) between 2003 and November 2008 and stepped down from this to position to concentrate on his research studies. Rick is still a Director on the Board.
Rick's research interests are in locating and countering racisms, and in developing intercultural educational youth work practice. These interests also relate to wider issues of belonging, 'integration' and cohesion. He holds an interest in making links with the 'community', in order to maintain the relationship between learning and teaching; external engagement; research and practice.
Research Interests
Rick is a member of the Centre for Equalities and Social Justice and has been undertaking strategic support to several black workers and youth projects across the region. This includes working on a number of smaller local practice and research projects looking at raising aspirations, developing cultural competence and building social and emotional literacy as part of the wider struggle to counter all forms of racism. He is also currently working on his doctoral research into racisms in and around youth work.
Selected Publications
2010 Bowler, R., Imam, F, U., Youth Workers as critical interpreters and mediators: Ethical issues in working with Black young people, in Banks, S., 2010, (ed.), 2nd edition, Ethical Issues in Youth Work, London, Routledge.
2010 Bowler, R., Learning from Lives, in Buchroth, I., Parkin, C., 2010, (eds.) `Using theory in Youth and Community Work Practice, Exeter, Learning Matters.
2006 Racism, Sectarianism and Youth Work. Paper for Northern Ireland Youth Council publication 'R.SharD FuTR'.
2006 Research Report - The Needs of Black and Minority Ethnic Young People and Youth Work in South Tyneside.
2002 PROUD Report. Report for Young Asian Voices and The National Youth Agency.
2000 A Transnational Study 'Hearing the Voices of Refugees in Policy and Practice across the European Union' JA1. 1999/D.4/1011
