Gisella Hanley Santos

Dr Gisella Hanley Santos

Job title: Research Fellow in Public Health Sociology, School of Social Science and Social Work (Faculty of Health, Education and Society)
Address: Room 300, Hepworth House, Drake Circus,
Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA
Telephone: +441752586988
Email: gisella.hanleysantos@plymouth.ac.uk

Role

Research Fellow in Public Health Sociology

Qualifications & background

January 2003 - Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis title: 'Negotiating Change: Street and Delinquent Youth in a Drug Treatment Program in Brazil'.

June 1997 - M.A. in Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Title: 'Children of the Street in Brazil: An Integrated Approach to the Analysis of Why Children and Youth Run Away from Home to Live in the Streets'.

June 1993 - B.Sc. Hon. Anthropology, University College London
Title: 'Children of the Street, Why? A Critical Discussion of Current Social Policy Theories as they Relate to the Existence of Children of the Street in Mexico, with Particular Reference to the City of Puebla'.

Research interests

· Drug use, drug policy, harm reduction and drug treatment

· Social integration of street children and young offenders

· Social construction of childhood, “at-risk” youth and “rehabilitation”

· Transition to adulthood

· Desistance from crime

· Identity formation and change; personal and cultural meanings of change

· Power and resistance

Other research

Aug 2009 to Dec 2010 Evaluation of Three ‘ Transition to Adulthood’ (T2A) Pilot

Projects for Young Adults in the Criminal Justice System.

Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford

PI: Dr. Ros Burnett

Jan to March 2001 Gangs in a Los Angeles Housing Project.

University of California Los Angeles

PI: Professor Diego Vigil

Summers of 1998 & 1999 Street Youth in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.

University of California Los Angeles

PI: Professor Diego Vigil

Sept 1997 to June 1999 The School Transition Study

The Harvard Family Research Project, Harvard University

PI: Dr. Heather Weiss

Additional information

After I was awarded my doctorate in January 2003, I took a six-year break from academia and devoted my time to setting up and running a drug rehabilitation programme for street children and young offenders, near the city of Salvador in northeast Brazil. Called Viva a Vida (meaning ‘live life’), the charity aims to empower substance-abusing street children by providing them with support to understand and address their addiction and the necessary skills to help them achieve their goals.

Viva a Vida provided the only therapeutic residential drug rehabilitation programme in the metropolitan region of Salvador aimed at the needs of street children and low-income adolescent boys addicted to crack and other drugs. Unfortunately, the global financial crisis hit our small charity and dwindling funds meant that we had to make the tough decision to close down the treatment centre in October 2009 and concentrate our funding to continue running our aftercare mentoring and support service and our prevention in schools project.

Links
http://www.vivaavida.org/