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Sanne Akkerman and Tjitske de Groot, as new chairs, will join incumbent chair Veronique Schutjens in leading the Youth Education & Life Skills (YELS) community from 1 September. De Groot is enthusiastic: "My greatest motivation is bringing together everyone working with youth. I have experienced this before in previous collaborative projects, for example, on a topic such as interventions around countering polarisation."

Connection also plays a big role for Akkerman: "I see bringing together researchers working on youth as very valuable. In the past, researchers often looked at youth in one particular environment. For example, what young people experience at home, at school, online or in groups of friends. Instead, young people are constantly moving through all these worlds. By seeing them as whole people again with researchers from all disciplines, I think we can take a step forward in practice and science."

Young people are constantly moving through all these worlds. By seeing them as whole people again, with researchers from all disciplines, I think we can take a step forward in practice and science.

Both researchers work for the Faculty of Social Sciences, but have slightly different backgrounds. Akkerman researches from education, and De Groot from pedagogy. Akkerman: "We both look at youth from a broad perspective: outside and inside education, from young to young adult. In this, we can do a lot together. I think Tjitske has done a bit more from a global perspective. And I am very much into youth in the local environment. In their city or village, and their schools. In that, we complement each other nicely."