Keynote – Adolescents’ need to contribute to society

By Lysanne te Brinke

Adolescents who are growing up in the current decade need to deal with several societal challenges, such as increased inequalities and climate change. These challenges do not only impact youths’ mental health, but can potentially also be transformed into opportunities for youth to make meaningful contributions. In this keynote, Lysanne te Brinke will discuss possibilities to harness adolescents’ need to contribute to society within policy, education, and research settings. Furthermore, she will discuss the latest insights into the advantages of participatory research methods, where adolescents actively engage across multiple phases of the research process, empowering them to shape a brighter future for themselves and generations to come.

Lysanne te Brinke is an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology and Convergence Fellow at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research focuses on understanding how the interplay between inter-personal and inter-societal experiences and expectations may leads to adaptive (i.e., community engagement, contributing to society) and maladaptive outcomes (i.e., displaying antisocial behavior, feeling excluded from society). She recently received an individual VENI grant (NWO) to examine how adolescents can become agents of change, by zooming on contributions to close others and contributions to the broader society. As Convergence Fellow of the transdisciplinary Healthy Start Program, she involves the perspective of multiple stakeholders in her work (i.e., Living Lab approaches). Lysanne is also co-leader of the YoungXperts platform for youth participation in research. This platform uses a transdisciplinary perspective to integrate voices and opinions of youth in research. As part of this program, she regularly organizes co-creation sessions with adolescents, young adults, teachers, and youth workers. With the YoungXperts team, Lysanne was awarded an NWA Science Communication and Translation Grant for a 2-year continuation of the YoungXperts program, and a societal engagement award from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. As incoming president of the Early Researchers Union of the European Association of Developmental Psychology, she furthermore strives to represent a new generation of early career researchers.