
Nadia Jessop is a Lecturer in Psychology in Education at the University of York’s Department of Education. Her research focuses on equity, diversity and inclusion for historically underrepresented groups of young people in school and community contexts. As an interdisciplinary researcher, she works across the disciplines of social, developmental, cultural and behavioural community psychology to address issues of inequality. She has also previously worked at the University of Michigan’s Culture Collaboratory, the UNICEF Office of Research’s Education Unit and The Lifespan Institute’s WHO-collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development.
Nadia’s research interests centre on the social psychological factors influencing young people’s learning and development as well as their mental health and wellbeing. This spans a variety of topics including but not limited to violence prevention and intervention, cultural and civic identity, as well as race and gender achievement gaps. She adopts a positive youth development approach in her research to emphasise strengthening the existing and emerging competencies of vulnerable youth rather than view them as a problem to be fixed.
As a previous Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre Early Career Researcher Development Fund grant holder, Nadia led the SHaRE IT! Project. This project combined social psychological theory with participatory action research methods to examine procedural justice for racially minoritised young women and girls who report public sexual harassment to the police.
Nadia is also co-leading one of the Centre’s new projects on how race shapes vulnerable young people’s perceptions of and interactions with the police. Consistent with the Centre’s inclusive and anti-discriminatory approach, the project will adopt participant-centred approaches to co-production activities and an ethics of care and solidarity-building with historically underrepresented communities. This means that the research prioritises the voices and experiences of racially minoritised vulnerable young people, while highlighting the links between oppressive social structures and their everyday experiences.