Untangling the Spectral: Youth Experiences of Growing up in the Former Coalfields

Simpson, K. (Keynote speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk

Description

This keynote explores how the concept of social haunting offers a lens to understand the entangled temporalities shaping young people’s lives in deindustrialised communities. Drawing on ethnographic research in former coalfield regions of South Yorkshire, it examines how industrial legacies persist as affective forces and matters – ghostly presences and material traces – that shape young people’s experiences of education and community in the present-future. These hauntings are not simply remnants of the past but active agents interacting with young people’s negotiations of the social world in the past-present-future. By connecting these insights to the temporality of time through the notion of social haunting, the keynote considers how recognising spectral traces of deindustrialisation – the loss, the injustice, and the goodness – can inform more responsive, temporal, and relational approaches to understanding youth engagement and experiences in times of uncertainty and transformation.

Period	15 Nov 2025
Event title	XXIII Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2025: Celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Youth Work Education at Tampere University: The Time together?
Event type	Conference
Location	Tampere, FinlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Documents & Links

XXIII Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2025 will be held at Tampere University (Kalevantie 4, Tampere) on 13–14 November 2025. The theme of the conference is The Time together? Youth, as a life phase, exists in time, and time influences the experience of youth. Young people of different generations come of age at different times and under varying societal conditions. The experiences of youth leave their mark on everyone’s life courses in one way or another. The Annual Conference of Youth Studies 2025 will focus on the significance of time for youth. At the same time, we will celebrate the 80th anniversary of youth work education at Tampere University. Young people of the 21st century encounter, reflect on, and solve many existential questions in a world characterized by uncertainty, tension, and crises. Among young people, the present and future may cause concern and anxiety, which are addressed among peers, within families and across generations, as well as with professionals. We often hope that time will resolve problems, and some youth wish to take part in finding the solutions. At the same time, time is a scarce resource in our increasingly fast-paced society. Time is needed for encounters, for listening others, for togetherness, for understanding the world around us, and for contemplating possibilities for action. Shared time is a resource—but do we have it? How do rapid global changes, diverse and entangled crises, and accelerating technological development enable and challenge being together and sharing time, both within and between generations? The past, the present, and the future meet in the course of human life. Life courses, social relations, societies and the whole ecosystem are shaped over time by a chain of possibilities, limitations, continuities, and breaks. Young people’s agency intertwines with society as time moves forward. Living conditions, places, and habits have created distinct conditions for young people and youth as a life phase across eras. The history of youth is long—but is youth the same across times? Keynote speakers The keynote speakers at the Annual Conference of Youth Studies are Dr. Jessica Ringrose (University College London), Dr. Kat Simpson (University of Huddersfield), Dr. Ville Vuolanto (Tampere University) and Dr. Kaisa Vehkalahti (University of Jyväskylä).