du Bois-Reymond, Manuela 1940–

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du Bois-Reymond, Manuela 1940–

PERSONAL: Born March 3, 1940, in Berlin, Germany; daughter of Felix (an orthopedist) and Sibylle (a homemaker; maiden name, Schweitzer; later surname, Hochheimer) du Bois-Reymond; married Burkhardt Söil (an artist and composer), 1994; children: Paul du Bois-Reymond. Education: Attended Free University, Berlin, Germany, and Columbia University, New York.

ADDRESSES: Home—Zijlsingel 40, NL-2315 KD Leiden, Netherlands. Office—University of Leiden, Faculty of Social Sciences, Wassenaarseweg 52, NL-2300 RB Leiden, Netherlands. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and social scientist. Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogih und Sozialarbeit Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, West Germany (now Germany), assistant professor, 1976–77; University of Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands, professor of sociology of education, 1977–85, professor of youth sociology, 1985–2005. Visiting professor at University of Dresden, 1992, and University of Siegen, 1994. Council of Europe, affiliate of European Commission. Member of editorial board of professional journals, including Childhood, Young, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Journal of Youth Studies. Has done advisory work for the Council of Europe and the European Commission.

WRITINGS:

(With Burkhardt Söil) Neuköllner Schulbuch, Suhrkamp tb Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1974.

(Editor, with Heinz Sunker and Heinz-Hermann Kruger) Childhood in Europe: Approaches-Trends-Findings, Peter Lang Publishing (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor, with A. Walther, B. Stauber, A. Biggart et al.) Misleading Trajectories—Integration Policies for Young Adults in Europe? Leske & Budrich (Opladen, Germany), 2002.

Lernfeld Europa. Eine kritische Analyse der Lebenslund Lernbedingungen von Kindern und Jungendlichen in Europa (title means "Learnfield Europe. An analysis of the conditions of life and learning of children and young people in Europe,") VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (Weisbaden, Germany), 2004.

(Editor, with A. Walther and A. Biggart) Participation in Transition, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 2006.

(Editor, with L. Chisholm) The Times are a'Changing: Modernising Youth Transitions in Europe, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 2006.

Contributor to Trading Up. Potentials and performance in non-formal learning (19-26), edited by L. Chisholm and B. Hoskins, Council of Europe, (Strasbourg, France), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: UplYouth. Youth—actor of Social Change, with EGRIS (European Group for Integrated Social Research), expected 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Manuela du Bois-Reymond told CA: "In 1977 I moved from Berlin to Leiden, the Netherlands, to take up my professorship there. Changing countries doubles perspectives, I found. Much of my scientific work had and still has a comparative component. From the beginning of my career, and after finishing my study of educational science and sociology, I was interested in the social and cultural conditions of learning—an interest that inevitably focuses on underprivileged groups of learners and their living conditions (and my favorite book of my own work is still the one which I wrote in 1974, together with Burkhardt Söil, describing the school and life world of working class kids and their parents in a working class neighborhood in former West Berlin). Since the beginning of the 1980s, I am involved in various European networks and activities which aim to promote European unification and exchange. I think that one of the most exiting developments in contemporary societies is indeed the paradoxical relationality between growth of risks as well as chances for young people and I am concerned about the uneven spread of both, in Europe and elsewhere in the world. I regard myself as one of these 'lifelong learners' who we all will have to become and to be, never mind our age. I am a realist about the impact of scientific writing, so I do not think that my writings will change the world. But I strongly believe in cooperation and teamwork among scientists and together with my colleagues I work at 'bridge building' across countries and between people. Finally: I have learned a lot from my son who is now a young adult in a (post-)modern world, more than he could possibly imagine."