Carlene Firmin

Carlene Firmin MBE (born 1983 or 1984)[1] is a British social researcher and writer specialising in violence between young people, and founder of the MsUnderstood Partnership. She is a senior research fellow at the University of Bedfordshire.

Early life and education

Firmin attended St Michael's Catholic Grammar School in Barnet, London. She has a B.A. in philosophy from Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, and an M.Sc. in social policy and planning from the London School of Economics.[2] She has a professional doctorate from the University of Bedfordshire for which her thesis was "Peer on peer abuse: safeguarding implications of contextualising abuse between young people within social fields" (2015).[3]

Career

Firmin was senior policy officer at Race on the Agenda (ROTA), and founded the GAG project (Girls Against Gangs, or Girls Affected by Gangs, or Gendered Action on Gangs).[2] She has held positions of assistant director of policy and research at Barnardos, specialising in youth justice and sexual exploitation of children; principal policy adviser at the Office of the Children's Commissioner; and head of the secretariat for the Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Groups and Gangs.[1][4]

Between 2011 and 2014 she wrote a regular column "Girl in the Corner" in The Guardian.[5]

In 2013 she founded the MsUnderstood Partnership, a joint project between Girls in Gangs, Imkaan and the University of Bedfordshire.[6] The project "aims to improve local and national responses to young people’s experiences of inequality".[7]

Firmin is a senior research fellow in the Institute of Applied Research of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire.[3]

Awards

Firmin was awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for "services to girls' and women's issues",[8] and was the youngest black woman to have received this honour.[2]

References
  1. Power List 2013: Britain's most influential black people. 2013. p. 51. Retrieved 3 February 2013.
  2. "Carlene Firmin - youngest black woman to be awarded MBE". ICN: Independent Catholic News. 3 January 2011. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  3. "Carlene Firmin, MBE". Department of Applied Social Studies: Institute of Applied Social Research Staff. University of Bedfordshire. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  4. ""If only someone had listened": Office of the Children's Commissioner's Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups: final report". British Library. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 3 February 2016. Catalogue record and pdf download link
  5. "Profile: Carlene Firmin". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  6. "Who we are". MsUnderstood. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  7. "Home page". MsUnderstood. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  8. "New Year Honours List 2011 in full". Daily Telegraph. 31 December 2010. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  • "Carlene Firmin, MBE". Department of Applied Social Studies: Institute of Applied Social Research Staff. University of Bedfordshire. Includes list of publications


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.