This volume brings together young scholar-practitioners who draw on their own lived expertise and academic practice to examine how youth navigate complex socio-cultural and political conflicts, to bring about social and cultural change, creating space for positive peace despite decades of compounding crises. Contributors draw on expert knowledge and practice in a truly global range of contexts, covering Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and West Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The specific insights of each chapter are situated in relation to the global policy architecture of the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, established by the UN Security Council, linking local and global contexts and extending limited but rapidly growing attention to youth as knowledge producers on peace and conflict

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Katrina Leclerc is a PhD candidate and part-time professor in Conflict Studies at Saint-Paul University. Her research focuses on gender- and age-sensitive peacebuilding, youth engagement, and inclusive policy in conflict-affected contexts. Katrina is a policy specialist advising governments and UN agencies on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agendas, including in Canada, Chad, the DRC, Kenya, Lebanon, Nepal, and Rwanda. Erika Isabel Bulan Yague is a PhD candidate at Griffith University. She specializes in young people's engagement in emergencies, peacebuilding and disaster risk reduction. She has over a decade of experience working with the UN, governments, and civil society, including roles with UNICEF, UN DPPA-DPO and UNFPA. Her work and research are grounded in feminist and Global South perspectives on youth leadership and participation. Helen Berents is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland. Her research draws on peace studies, feminist international relations, and critical security studies to consider representations of children and youth in crises and conflicts, and engagements with lived experiences of violence-affected young people.