Position Paper 2023

Transdisciplinary Research for Youth Justice – Position Paper 2023 31 factors are those things that are outside of a system but which impact on it. For example, policy making or political debate, and even media coverage can be a risk factor to the youth justice system. A protective factor may be the welfare element of children who are in conflict with the law and other things such as the UNCRC which would protect a child’s right to education, for example. Charlie would similarly have his own internal vulnerabilities- invulnerabilities/risk-protective factors that would shape his own interactions with the wider system. Using the DIMoR framework can enable an understanding of these features that impact on Charlie’s case and the system/s of which he would be a part. The Synthesis Synthesising the different strands of research with their multiple methods, frameworks and even ideologies will be the key task of TRYJustice. This Data stage (Meenan & Keestra, 2016) requires the data collected by the contributing discipline to also be analysed by the other disciplines to enable them to interrogate the data for their interpretation. This represents a key phase within which the unique insights from taking a transdisciplinary approach will emerge. This will not just be a key phase of the research programme but is also an output of the research and involves an iterative and discursive process or the Finalisation phase (as per Menken & Keestra (2016) model). The Next Stage This paper has presented a rationale for the TRYJustice Network and in some ways ‘set out its stall’ in terms of where it stands and what it stands for. It also presents a working paper on how we have developed the underpinnings of a transdisciplinary research programme cohering around a common problem statement and research questions. The next steps are to articulate further the research programme in the form of a formal research funding bid which sets down how each strand of the research programme contributes to answering the research questions and how we go about it as a multi- disciplinary research team. This will be followed by a series of research papers which we believe combined will add novel insights into how we can foster positive outcomes for children who come into conflict with the law.