R2.34, Ramphal Building
P.A.Mizen@warwick.ac.uk
Lake Volta, Ghana
Phil is primarily a sociologist of youth and children, considered in relation to work, labour, and the state. He has written extensively on 'youth policy' by examiining how neo-liberal state forms impact on young people's lives. He has also researched youth unemployment in the UK and, more recently, children's work and labour in the informal urban economy in West Africa. His interest in these 'new urban childhoods' has involved research projects in Ghana exploring street life as labour and, currently, children's lives and labour in a large informal settlement in central Accra. Phil has a particular interested in visual methodology, including children's photography.
Recently Phil has returned to an earlier interest in political sociology. He is jointly responsible for coordinating the ethnographic element of a large European Union funded project (MYPLACE) examining young people's civic engagement and political participation across 14 partner countries, and for conducting his own ethnographic case study on the Occupy Movement in the United Kingdom.
Phil has produced 3 books and around 40 journal articles and chapters in edited collections. Some of these publications can be found here. Phil has held visiting positions at the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana, the Council for the Development of Social Science in Africa (CODESRIA), Senegal, Dakar, and the Department of Applied Social Studies at City University Hong Kong. He has supervised (past and present) 13 doctoral students and has examined 8 PhD theses at the universities of Warwick, Essex, Sheffield, Portsmouth and Sydney.
