Academy Fellow

Judith Bessant, AM, is an Australian social scientist who is a Professor at RMIT University. She is known for the ways her work has helped inform how many sociologists, political scientists and policy studies researchers and various professional  practitioners think about and relate to young people, their political participation, citizenship and democracy. In 2017, she was awarded an Order of Australia (AM), for her ‘outstanding scholarship in sociology, politics policy and youth studies, and for significant and sustained contributions to public policy’.  

Early in her academic career she recognised how many academics, policy-makers and public opinion-makers subscribed to stories about young people misrecognising them variously as under-socialized trouble-makers burdened by numerous cognitive, moral and social deficiencies. Bessant’s research has consistently been directed towards identifying and challenging those harmful misrepresentations. Her contributions to fields like sociology, political science and policy studies draw on other traditions of inquiry including history, cognitive co-evolutionary theory, cultural and media studies, technology studies and political economy. Judith Bessant has documented how generational relations, age-based prejudices and adult interests have shaped the dominant representations of young people by those in governments, in various professionals, the media and researchers and informed action towards them.

Her work has also been directed towards encouraging those working in youth studies and the sociology of youth to focus on how state power and the evolution of neoliberal politics combined to deny young people opportunities to lead flourishing lives. She has documented the various ways young people have historically and more recently engaged as political actors in a range of public activities addressing major social-political issues of the day. Bessant is currently working with colleagues researching School Strike for Climate action highlighting the creative and often novel forms of democratic political practices many young people are developing.  

She has taken an expansive view of the interplay between new technologies like AI, social change, the social sciences and democracy in a period marked by significant environmental, technological and socio-economic disruptions. Her multi-disciplinary approach led her to consider the implications of ideas proposed by philosophical anthropologists, post humanists and new materialists. This research focus considers whether we are witnessing evidence of a move towards a new social imaginary or post anthropocentric ontology. 

In parallel with her scholarly work, Judith Bessant has engaged with policy makers to influence decisions making and practice in local, national and international government agencies and NGOs. This has involved making regular submissions to official inquiries and providing formal advice to governments and NGOs. She has also long advocated for young people subject to various injustices and harms including institutional sexual abuse. In 2021 she was invited to join the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health co-leading an international research team ‘Workstream 11 ‘Social-ecological Systems Approach to Intergenerational Justice’. She is also involved in campaigns to lower the voting age and is working with UNESCO on a project that aims to better inform governments and NGOs about the political interests and lives of young people.  

Professor RMIT University

Order of Australia. AM

1..Bessant, J., 2018. The Great Transformation, History for a Techno-Human Future, Routledge

2. Bessant, J., 2021, Making-Up People: Youth, Truth and Politics, Routledge 

3. Bessant, J., 2004, Mixed Messages: Youth Participation and Democratic Practice, Australian Journal of Political Science, 39, (2): 387-404.

4. Bessant, J., 1995, The Discovery of an Australian 'juvenile underclass', Australian New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 32-48.

5. Bessant, J., 2008, Hard Wired for Risk: Neurological Science, ‘The Adolescent Brain and Developmental Theory, Journal of Youth Studies, V.11, No 3, pp.347-360.