Alan Prout

Alan Prout is a sociologist who has held Professorships at a number of UK universities, including most recently Warwick and Leeds. He writes mostly on contemporary childhood in a series of highly cited books such as "Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood", "Theorizing Childhood" and "The Future of Childhood". Almost retired, he continues to write about the sociology of childhood but also a wider range of topics connected with his political and community activity in the Colne Valley, situated in West Yorkshire, England. The Colne Valley is one of the two or three places that can claim to be the birthplace of the Labour Party and is an environment steeped in the history of radical liberal, socialist and reforming political movements - not to mention a measure of working class conservativism.