The articles presented here engage with some of the multifaceted and intersecting challenges faced by young people today – these include conflict, insecurity, limited government support, deep-set gender discrimination, climate change, infectious disease and a widespread lack of decent jobs. While recognising the structural influences on young people’s circumstances, the articles gathered here bring young people’s perspectives, experiences and actions to the fore. With an eye on the future, and a sense of the past, this collection is situated in the present. Most of the research presented here stems from the British Academy’s Youth Futures research funding scheme. The results showcased here remind us how the present matters in and of itself, while influenced by the past and playing a key role in shaping the future. Thus there is a triple significance to understanding young people’s challenges: they matter for today and for how they impact tomorrow, and will be best understood with reference to the past.

In the current era of peak youth, young people’s voices and authentic participation are needed more than ever. This article focuses on how youth participation in research can enhance wider understanding of young people’s experiences, perspectives and solutions, while also empowering young people. There is an established tradition of engaging young people and children with the qualitative research process, ranging from youth focussed research to youth-led participatory action research. Within this we occupy a middle ground, arguing for the need to create heterotopic spaces for participation in which both young researchers and professional researchers learn from one another’s expertise. Mindful of the roadblocks to authentic participation, this article systematically approaches engaging young people at six critical stages in the research process, namely: setting the framework; question design; data collection; analysis; validation; and sharing results for discussion and action. Youth co-research offers methodological rigour grounded in a reconceptualization of where expertise can be found, a committed approach to research training and youth empowerment, greater access to hard-to-reach groups of young people and data validity built upon close engagement with young researchers. To demonstrate our approach, we share in this article three youth co-research case studies, which focus on young people experiencing climate change disruptions in Uganda, young people impacted by COVID-19 in Indonesia and Nepal and a youth think tank convened between East, West and Southern Africa. The rigour and value of youth-engaged qualitative methodologies can benefit young people, as well as the academics, policymakers and NGOs with whom they work.