Jane Higgins

Jane Higgins was born and raised in Christchurch and attended both Canterbury and Otago Universities as a student. In the mid-1990s, after completing her PhD on the changing nature of youth employment, she joined the staff of the University of Canterbury as a lecturer in the Sociology Department. There she lectured in social policy and developed her research interest in youth studies. She also began work, with Karen Nairn, on the Marsden project on which The Children of Rogernomics is based. In order to concentrate primarily on research, she moved to Lincoln University in 2005 as a Senior Research Fellow. There she has worked on a range of research projects to do with youth in transition including (from 2008-2012) a five year study on education-employment linkages for young people (see www.eel.org.nz). Her focus in that project has been on young people with low or no qualifications crafting career pathways. Jane has also published a young adult novel, The Bridge (Text Publishing, Melbourne), which won the 2010 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Writing (www.janehiggins.co.nz).