Mentoring Group | Rural Youth Participation

Apply to the Call for Mentees (Open until 31st October 2021)

The mentoring program “Rural Youth Participation” will support PhD students and Early Careers Researchers (ECRs) who want to develop interdisciplinary research proposals focusing on the processes, factors, challenges and opportunities for young people’s participation in rural areas. Existing literature has not yet sufficiently examined the impact of spatial inequalities on youth participation, nor how these disparities may interact with other inequalities, particularly in a NEET situation. By focusing on the participation of young people in rural areas, this mentoring program will help to build up research capacity on rural youth at the European level.

We will provide group and peer-to-peer support to 12 mentees. Our mentoring team is composed of 8 mentors with expertise in different academic areas such as sociology, business, economics, agriculture, psychology, political science, and geography. Mentors are currently based in different European countries, including ICT Cost countries (Albania, Czechia, Italy, UK, Turkey, Spain, Slovenia, Portugal). We will create conditions and opportunities so that all mentees can submit one individual or joint research proposal. We will support the preparation of individual, national and international collaborative research proposals. Research proposals submitted within this program should address at least one of the following topics:

Participation and inclusion of rural youth in policy dialogue, design and implementation of interventions and programs, particularly those related to young people nor in education nor in employment (NEETs).
Youth participation and rural development (e.g., agriculture, forests, social economy).
Young people’s engagement with public participation processes, collective action and/or social movements in rural areas.
Young people’s engagement with climate change, including aspects related to youth empowerment to participate in environmental action.
Opportunities and challenges of digitalization and innovation and youth participation.
Gender and migration dimensions of youth participation in rural areas and intersection with other structural inequalities.

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MORE INFO ABOUT THE MENTORING PROGRAM (May 2021)