Since 2015 I have been involved in mentoring programs which are focused on migrating and young population. For this reason, I am interested in life courses and young foreign people. Also, the research that I am developing revolves around this topic and covers the same population group.
Because of my studies and work experience I have been interested in the mentoring impact since I started to be close of this social intervention methodology. Nowadays, I am working with unaccompanied minors or foreign young people that are turning 18 in Spain. When they turn 18, they start an inconsistent route with a lot of challenges to obtain a viable future because of the lack of institutional and social support. We have been following them up for seven months to see the challenges they face, especially regarding with their psychological distress and wellbeing in this stage of their life. Our initial hypothesis was that the more support they have, the better for them in defining, readjusting and retaking their educational and occupational trajectories in the new country. Moreover, we also see how the absence or presence of formal and informal mentoring relationships could have an impact in this critical moment of their life course.
For me, being close of these processes is interesting, but also, I think that the results could have implications for the Administration, practitioners and immigrant organizations in identifying their needs and how to provide effective networks of support, which I think is the most powerful thing. Cooperate on the development of a mentoring apprenticeship community.

I finished my bachelor’s degree studies on Social Work in Universitat Rovira i Virigli at 2016. After that I was studying a master’s degree on Youth and Society which was coordinated by the University of Girona but involved several Catalonian Universities with expertise on youth policies, youth communication or research on becoming adult and life courses.
My first experience on mentoring was as a mentor in a Nightingale program conducted by “Quilòmetre Zero” (a social association which develops this program in Tarragona). After that, I began to work on monitoring mentoring relationships in the same entity during 2016. The next year I was working in the same professional role in a mentoring program with refugee mentees, a program coordinated by the Catalan Government. This program was the first experience in Spain on groups of mentoring.
Nowadays, I am working as a researcher at the University of Girona. My work is focused on developing a common evaluation frame for the Spanish mentoring programs. This research is named Applying Mentoring. Also, I am a PhD candidate in the same university, and I am starting a research that pretends to shed some light about the situation of former unaccompanied minors who are turning 18 and becoming legally adults in Spain. At the same time, I continue giving support like trainer to different social entities that are using mentoring as a social intervention methodology.

In the context of my Ph.D. dissertation, I am interesting in mentoring to work for people with a migration background or origin.

I am a Ph. D. Candidate in Economics at ECARES at the Université libre de Bruxelles.

Program Manager of the Mentor UP Mentoring Program, inplemented from D.P.S.S. - University of Padova

I have been researching mentoring in Ireland for 15 years and have undertaken a broad range of studies with colleagues. I am co-author of A Guide to Youth Mentoring: Providing effective social support (with Pat Dolan, Jessica Kingsley, 2012) and of Mentoring Young People in Care and Leaving Care: Theory, Research and Practice (with Pat Dolan, Caroline McGregor, Routledge, forthcoming, 2019). I have also published a range of journal articles and book chapters on youth mentoring.

I am a Lecturer at the School of Political Science & Sociology, NUI, Galway in Ireland and a Senior Researcher with the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre.

Dr Heide Busse worked for the Centre for Public Health at Bristol Medical School (Population Health Sciences), United Kingdom, from 2012 to 2018. Heide joined the Centre for Public Health initially as a research associate in public health from 2012-2014 where she worked on a range of public health projects focussed on children and young people funded by the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer) and the National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR). As part of this role, Heide worked on over 20 different research projects mostly concerned with children and young people. One study included a feasibility randomised controlled trial of a local mentoring programme which aimed to imrpove health and wellbeing amongst vulnerable secondary school students.

From 2015-2018, Heide undertook a PhD studentship that investigated the role of mentoring and mentoring programmes in relation to young people’s health, educational and employability outcomes.

Heide is experienced with the following research methodologies: randomised controlled trials (incl. process and cost evaluations), qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, observations) and systematic review methodology (incl. reviews of reviews and qualitative synthesis).

Heide’s broader research interests include young people’s emotional health and wellbeing, the role of natural and formal mentors in the life of young people, health inequities and developing and evaluation public health interventions.

Heide has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Groningen, Netherlands (2011), an MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Bath, United Kingdom (UK) (2012), and has recently been awarded a PhD in Public Health from the University of Bristol (UK) (2019).

Heide's PhD thesis was entitled "Investigating the role of mentoring and mentoring programmes in improving young people’s health, educational and employability outcomes." Her PhD was funded by the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), one of five Public Health Research Centres of Excellence in the United Kingdom.

With her background in psychology and public health and experiences in working with young people in various settings (sport, clinical, research), Heide is particularly interested in finding out what works to improve and maintain the health and well-being of children and young people.

I am assistant professor and political scientist at the University of Girona.

Kirsten Christensen is a Ph.D. candidate in Clinical Psychology and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Boston

De Meijer, L.A.L. (2018, April). Mentoring Urban Talent. Presentation at Erasmus+ Steering Group Meeting, Riga, Letland.

Meeuwisse, M., De Meijer, L.A.L., Born, M.Ph., Severiens, S.E. (2017). The work-study interface: Similarities and differences between ethnic minority and ethnic majority students. Higher Education, 73, 261-280.

De Meijer, L. (2008). Ethnicity effects in police officer selection: Applicant, assessor, and selection-method factors. Doctoral dissertation, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Lonneke de Meijer is a psychologist and educational scientist. She is working as assistant professor at the department of Psychology, Education & Child Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. Her research focuses on school careers, transition, and teacher professionalization, all in the urban diversified context. At the moment, she is scientific leader of a project into mentoring of talented urban youth.

Students from an underprivileged background do face specific forms of socialization due to their experience of social mobility. In this context, we try to understand the construction of their representations regarding their own trajectories and more specifically on what they define as a success in their trajectory. Thanks to qualitative and quantitative longitudinal methods including mentees and mentors, we analyse the effects of the mentoring programme on the construction of these representations and their subjective experience of social mobility.

Allouch, Annabelle, et Hélène Buisson-Fenet. « Diversification des élites et repositionnement organisationnel ». Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, no 7, 2008, 155‑71.
Clemence, Alain, Willem Doise, et Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi. The Quantitative Analysis of Social Representations. Routledge, 2014.
Jaquet, Chantal. 2014. Les transclasses, ou, La non-reproduction. 1re édition. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Negura, Lilian. « L’analyse de contenu dans l’étude des représentations sociales ». SociologieS, 2006, 1-16.
Orange, Sophie. 2013. « L’autre enseignement supérieur: les BTS et la gestion des aspirations scolaires ». Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Pagis, Julie, et Pasquali, Paul, Observer les mobilités sociales en train de se faire, Observing Social Mobility in the Making. Politix, n°14, 2016, 7–20.
Pasquali, Paul. « Les enfants de l’« ouverture sociale » Agora débats/jeunesses, no 53, 2001, 117‑34.
Truong, Fabien, Jeunesses françaises, Paris : La découverte, 2015

After a Master Degree in Political sciences I work on public projects directed to young people with the French Ministry of Youth (INJEP). Then I completed a PhD in Education from the University of Burgundy in 2017. I worked on creativity as a specific ressource having impacts on educational and professional inequalities. As a researcher on the Mentoring programme set up by the french NGO Article 1, I work on measuring the social mobility of students and the subjective experience of this mobility with a focus on the mentees representations of success. I also work on what really counts in the Mentoring programme settings.

My research title is the Conceptualisation of mentoring within a military context. It is an ethnographical study utilising 5/6 case studies looking at the various formal/informal mentoring set ups across the Royal Air Force.

I am a commissioned officer within the Royal Air Force and am currently studying for a Professional Doctorate in Education at The University of Wolverhampton. My previous qualifications include a MA in Education, PGCE in Mentoring in Education and PGCE in Strategic Leadership.

My research focuses on individual, relational and organizational factors that influence youth mentoring relationships, using quantitative and qualitative methods to enhance the quality and quantity of youth mentoring relationships through evidence-informed practice. I previously worked as a Match Support Specialist at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay and served as an AmeriCorps Ambassador of Mentoring at Mass Mentoring Partnership.

My research interests are program development and evaluation targeting at-risk youth and their families. I am particularly interested in interventions that promote positive youth development and resilience among youth via fostering functional family processes and healthy adult-youth relationships. I have been interested in youth mentoring research since my post-doctoral year. I have projects that investigate the role natural mentoring relationships for at-risk youth, examine the impact of peer mentoring for mentors and mentees and their parents as well as cultural variations in youth mentoring. Me and my colleagues have developed a rehabilitation model for youth in probation where probation officers assess and advocate for youth's needs to prevent recidivism. Our model (inspired by youth mentoring practices and evidence based family therapy for juvenile delinquents) is currently running in 21 cities across Turkey.

Gizem Erdem is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Koç University, İstanbul, Turkey. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a clinical supervisor. She obtained her BA degree in Psychology from Boğaziçi University, Turkey and her MS and PhD in Human Development and Family Science (with specialization in Couple and Family Therapy) from the Ohio State University, US. She was a post-doc researcher at University of Illinois at Chicago from January through December 2014 and a visiting scholar at Harvard University in Summer 2017. She was awarded 2013 NCFR Student Award, 2018 NCFR President for a day Award in the US and 2019 Academy of Sciences Young Scientist Award in Turkey for her research with marginalized youth and families. She consults UNODC, Turkish Ministry of Justice, NMRC and UNICEF in evidence-based practices to reduce youth delinquency, crime, and substance abuse.

Grace Gowdy research interests include community and family influence on individual upward mobility, with a particular focus on the adolescent stage. Her dissertation was on informal mentors and their ability to promote economic upward mobility for low-income youth. Grace currently works on multiple studies examining traditional and nontraditional mentoring relationships. She previously ran a retention program for foster care alumni at a four-year university, where she focused more on structural barriers to mobility. In all of Grace’s work, she seeks to promote a just society where young people can be rewarded based on their merit along, and not their economic background.

The transition to adulthood among youth who age out of foster care
Natural mentoring and other supportive adult relationships for youth who age out of foster care
Child traumatic stress
Applied community-based intervention research and translation of research to practice
Resiliency, risk, and protective factors
Neurobiological mechanisms of resiliency-focused interventions
Life course theory
Domestic minor sex trafficking

Johanna Greeson, PhD, MSS. MLSP, is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. She is passionate about reforming the child welfare system, using research to build better futures for youth who age out of foster care, and realizing the power of connections to caring adults for all vulnerable youth. Her research agenda is resiliency-focused and based in the strengths and virtues that enable foster youth to not only survive but thrive. Dr. Greeson’s published work includes scholarly articles on natural mentoring, evidence-based practices for older youth in foster care, including independent living programming, residential group care, and intensive in-home therapy, low-income homeownership, child/adolescent traumatic stress, and domestic minor sex trafficking. Her work has been cited over 1,000 times in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature. She is the developer of Caring Adults ‘R’ Everywhere (C.A.R.E.), a novel, trauma-informed natural mentoring intervention for older youth in foster care, intended to solve the aging out dilemma. Dr. Greeson received her PhD in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009 and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University with the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress in 2012. She is also an alumna of Swarthmore, where she majored in Sociology/Anthropology – Education and graduated in 1997. She received her Master of Social Service and Master of Law & Social Policy degrees from Bryn Mawr in 2001. She joined the faculty of the School of Social Policy Practice at Penn in 2012.

Kathy Hauser has worked at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area, Inc. for over 20 years. She has been in her current role as the Director of Service Delivery since 2006.

I am a behavioural scientist with a special interest in research among young people with disabilities and their families. My PhD research on mentoring and social participation of young people with a visual impairment; explored new ways to support young people with disabilities.

The following are the projects I was funded for in FY2019.
1. Evidence Based Programs in Nebraska. This project totaled $309,600.00, and involved collaborating on the development and training on a statewide juvenile justice data collection system for 250 programs funded under Nebraska’s Community Based Juvenile Services Aid Fund. The contract includes conducting program evaluation and recidivism studies of selected community-based aid funded programs.
2. The Lancaster County Detention Utilization Study was funded by the Office of Probation in the amount of $8,000.00. In this evaluation, I examined data on youth detained in the Lancaster County Juvenile facility and provided policy recommendations for eliminating detention stays not required for community safety.
3. The Sherwood Foundation funded the Juvenile Reentry project in the amount of $95,150.00. I developed this service-learning project to match undergraduate mentors from college campuses, to youth re-entering a Nebraska community after commitment in a Youth Rehabilitation & Treatment Center. This program now operated on four University campuses and other states are hoping to adopt the mentoring model.
4. The Connected Youth Initiative was funded by the Nebraska Children’s Foundation in the amount of $4,666.00. This project involved testing a tool that measures the strength of collaboratives and seeks to explain why some collaborations are more successful than others are. The tool empirically tests the interconnection and intensity of collective impact domains across various collaborative models.

I am a licensed attorney, research faculty, and the Director of the Juvenile Justice Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I have been involved in various juvenile justice reform efforts in the State of Nebraska over the past decade. I serve on a variety of policy-making committees, including: The Nebraska Governor’s Children's Commission (Foster Care Subcommittee), The Traumatic Brain Injury Task Force, the Nebraska DMC Committee and the Nebraska Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. I have been very involved in evaluating evidence-based initiatives across the State of Nebraska and because of this, I regularly testify before the Nebraska Unicameral on reform of Nebraska’s juvenile justice system. One of my proudest accomplishments is the Juvenile Reentry Program. This project has been continuously funded since 2012, and allows undergraduate criminal justice students to mentor youth in the juvenile justice system. After training, University students are matched to youth, who are incarcerated or receiving treatment. Initial outcomes are promising for both the youth in the system and the University student.

My dissertation focuses on what I call inclusive mentoring. That is to say a particular development and empowerment orientated relation where mentor helps the recipient of the mentoring, the mentee, with clarifying and developing professional, personal and social competencies. In my view the mentor relation is a process where an informal transfer of knowledge, social capital and psychosocial support takes place. A knowledge which is perceived by the mentee as relevant in relation to the life situation and personal development he or she is in.

Inclusive mentor relations produce positive psychosocial capital in the widest sense. The mentees have the opportunity in the inclusive mentor relation to express both positive and negative feelings. Through the mentee’s stories mentor has opportunities to create a space for flexibility and to help the mentee manoeuvre in particularly difficult situations. Particularly valuable relations open up for the mentee’s hidden resources, help with expressing new sides, and open up for the creation of a new identity. Manipulation or hidden agendas can destroy and lead to the production of negative social capital. Conversely, particularly valuable, open and trusting relations produce positive psychosocial added value and contributes towards preventing the exclusion and marginalisation of the mentee. Mentor contributes to facilitating this process.

Since 2003, I have worked with mentoring and getting a mentor in Denmark. My particular interest is mentoring that aims to include citizens who feel excluded and who may have difficulty getting a job or getting started with an education. There has been a rapid development since this type of mentoring was introduced around the turn of the millennium. Today, mentors are involved when it comes to vulnerable young people - mentors in the psychosocial field and a large number of other social areas.
In 2012, I wrote a PhD thesis on "inclusive mentoring". Since then, through my blog, I have followed up on what is happening in the area. Have taught or provided consulting services to a large number of organizations within voluntary social work, job centers, educational institutions, etc.
I am especially interested in practice-oriented research and learning. Including research on learning networks for mentors and those who get a mentor. Wider I am interested in the diversity of mentor-like relationships and how these interact with relational welfare.

Better profile later, sorry!

Klemm is the director of the Check & Connect program area within the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota. She is the co-principal investigator on two grant funded projects which implement the Check & Connect mentoring intervention. She directs the development of training workshops, technical assistance, publications, and technology that support Check & Connect implementation. Check & Connect is a mentoring intervention used with K-12 students who show warning signs of disengagement with school and are at risk of dropping out. At the core of the program is a trusting relationship between the student and a caring, trained mentor who both advocates for and challenges the student. Since the 1990s, Check & Connect has been successfully implemented in over 40 states across the U.S. and internationally.

Since April 2018 I'm a PhD-Student at Humboldt- University of Berlin/ department of education. Actually there are two mentoring programms placed in this departement. ‚Kratzeis‘ and ‚Traumasensitive learning‘ want to establish a temporary pedagogical relationship between the studens and the children and support the students to learn reflexive skills. The methodical approaches of my research are qualitative research studies on topic of education.

Natasha Koper received her bachelor degree in Pedagogical Sciences and her research master degree in Development and Socialisation in Childhood and Adolescence [DaSCA] (cum laude) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

In September 2017, she started working as a research assistant and lecturer at the department of Education & Pedagogy of Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

In March 2018, she started a PhD studying the effectiveness and working mechanisms of the Youth Initiated Mentoring (YIM) approach as an outpatient alternative for out-of-home care of youth (12-18 years) of multiproblem families. The project is a collaboration between the research center of Adolescent Development of Utrecht University, the department of Forensic Child and Youth Care Sciences of University of Amsterdam, and the YIM foundation. More information about the YIM approach can be found on: http://www.jimwerkt.nl/ (in Dutch).