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A/Prof Peter Kelly
Position: Principal Research Fellow in Social SciencePhone: +61 3 522 72698
Fax:
Email: peter.kelly@deakin.edu.au
Campus: F
University recorded publications
Researcher output profile for A/Prof Peter Kelly
Brief Biography
Peter Kelly is a social theorist/social researcher who has published extensively on young people, the practice of Youth Studies; social theory and globalisation. He has recently joined Deakin after working in the School of Political and Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University from 2005-2011. His research interests currently cover the following areas:
Youth Studies: Peter has an extensive research background in youth studies and an ongoing research interest in examining the challenges faced by young people as workers, and the ways in which youth transitions - and the family, employment, study and peer relationships shaped by these processes of transition - are being remade by the emergence of a globalised knowledge economy.
He is currently working with Associate Professor Lyn Harrison (School of Education, Deakin University) on an ARC Linkage project in collaboration with the third sector organisation Mission Australia. This project (Capacity Building and Social Enterprise: Individual and Organisational Transformation in Transitional Labour Market Programs) is conducting research in Mission Australiaâ??s social enterprise Transitional Labour Market Program at the Charcoal Lane restaurant in Gertrude St, Fitzroy. This social enterprise provides training and support for unemployed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young people. The project consists of two related studies. The first, an action research project, is a collaborative approach to examining the organisational practices of the enterprise with the aim of facilitating the programâ??s sustainability. The second part will identify factors that influence young peopleâ??s experiences and outcomes in this program.
The development of this project emerged from the research and publication of his book (2009) â?? published by Palgrave and co-authored with Associate Professor Harrison - titled: Working in Jamieâ??s Kitchen: Salvation, Passion and Young Workers. The book used the manufactured drama of the TV series Jamieâ??s Kitchen and Jamieâ??s Kitchen Australia to examine the ways in which marginalised young people are required to transform themselves into the type of person who can secure a tenuous form of salvation in the globalised labour markets of the 21st century.
New Work Ethics: This is a research program exploring the emergence of new work identities, obligations, and responsibilities in a globalised risk economy, and the ways these concerns find expression in various concerns for professionalisation, work-life balance, work related stress, and the idea that the self should imagine itself as an enterprise.
Aspects of this research area have been published in a book and a number of articles that emerged from an Australian Football League (AFL) funded research project (2004/5) titled: Getting the Balance Right: Professionalism, Performance, Prudentialism and Playstations in the Life of AFL Footballers. With Associate Professor Christopher Hickey (School of Education, Deakin University) Peter conducted research related to the evolution of a â??professional identityâ?? for AFL footballers. This is an identity that has many facets including the emerging ideas that a professional leads a balanced life, is a role model, and has a prudent orientation to the future, to life after football. A book titled: The Struggle for the Body, Mind and Soul of AFL Footballers was published from the work done in this project in November 2008.
Peter is currently finishing a book (The Self as Enterprise: Foucault and the Spirit of 21st Century Capitalism) to be published by Ashgate that will further examine these research interests.
His new book - Smashed: The many meanings of intoxication and drunkenness (with Jenny Advocat, Lyn Harrison and Chris Hickey) - develops work done in a number of projects including one that examined the cultural drivers of young peopleâ??s alcohol use, and another that reviewed the many meanings of intoxication and drunkenness (from the perspectives of experts and non-experts, in various contexts, and in relation to a number of concerns).
He currently holds a position of Senior Fellow (Honorary) at the Institute of Learning, The University of Hull (UK), and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Youth Studies, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport & Physical Education.
