Introduction

John Coleman is a psychologist whose primary interest is adolescence. He is the Founder of the Trust for the Study of Adolescence and was the Director of the organisation from 1989 until he retired in 2005. From 2005 to 2006 he held a post as a Policy Advisor in the Department of Health, and since October 2006 has been a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford. He is a Research Fellow of Green College, Oxford.

Career

John took his first degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He completed his PhD at University College, London in 1966, and following training at the Middlesex Hospital in London, moved to a position as a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the London Hospital Medical College in Whitechapel. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1971, and remained in this post until 1983. Following this he established the Sussex Youth Trust, an organisation providing residential care for disturbed teenagers, and then in 1989 he founded the Trust for the Study of Adolescence in Brighton.

Publications

John has published widely on the subject of adolescence. He is best known for his textbook "The nature of adolescence", the third edition of which was written jointly with Leo Hendry and published in 1999. This book has been translated into six languages and is published by Routledge. John is the author of 18 books and over 50 academic papers. He is the Editor of the Routledge series "Adolescence and society", and is also the Editor of a new John Wiley series called "Understanding adolescence". The first two books in this series are "Adolescence and health" and "Adolescence, risk and resilience". Both are published in 2007, and details can be found on the Wiley website.

Links to other organizations

John was for many years the Editor of the Journal of Adolescence, and is currently the Consulting Editor. He is Deputy Chair of the Independent Advisory Group for the Teenage Pregnancy Unit, which is based in the Department for Children, Schools and Families. He is Chair of Trustees for the charity Film-It, and a Trustee of the Family and Parenting Institute. He is engaged, with others, in the establishment of the Association for Young People's Health, which will be launched at a major conference on February 6th, 2008. Further details are available on the website of the Institute of Child Health in London.

Current research

His current research interests include young people and new technologies, the parenting of adolescents, and emotional health and well-being. Together with Professor Sonia Livingstone from the LSE he has recently been awarded an ESRC seminar series grant entitled "The impact of new technologies on young people in Britain". The seminar series will run through 2008 and 2009. Further details will be available soon.

John Coleman