Robert V. Adams

Robert V. Adams is an English author and educator who has written and edited more than eighty books relating to empowerment, participation, protest, crime, punishment, health, social policy and social work. He is also a writer of short stories, novels and poetry.

Robert Adams was brought up in Hampshire, but has lived in Yorkshire for nearly forty years, more than twenty of these in Hull. He has worked as a postman, in a timber factory and, after graduating from Manchester University, as a gardener and hotel cellarman before becoming a prison officer at HM Prison Pentonville. He later studied mostly part time at London, Leeds and York Universities. After seven years in the penal system, while serving as acting governor of a young offenders' institution, he resigned to direct Barnardo's first community-based social work project, aiming to keep children and young people at risk and in trouble out of the criminal justice system.

After about a decade of full-time work, Adams decided to devote much of his time to developing his writing interests. His non-fiction books include " Foundations of Health and Social Care" (2007), "Social Work and Empowerment" (2003) (going into its fourth edition after 17 years continuously in print, selling worldwide and translated into Korean and Japanese), "Protests by Pupils" (1991) and "Prison Riots in Britain and the USA" (1992) (in two editions, published in Britain and the USA). For many years he has held the part time position of Professor of Social Work in the School of Health & Social Care at the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough and, in addition to his myriad research and academic works, has written fiction under different pseudonyms. His poetry has been published in magazines and two book collections.

Adams was a member of the advisory council of Radio Humberside in its early days and has broadcast there as well as on Radio Leeds. He is very much behind the reclusive author "A A A Aarbon" a self-appointed student of obscure studies, who shares absolutely nothing in common with the 21st century, lives in a mansion which is falling into the sea on East Yorkshire's crumbling cliffs and writes memoirs of noteworthy irrelevance. Robert Adams' psychological thriller "Antman" was published in 2005. His crime short story "The Hull Executive" was published in a Crime Writers' Association book collection. Many of his books and stories are centred on Hull and East Yorkshire, where he lives on the outskirts of the ancient town of Hessle, a short walk from the Humber Bridge. He is a member of the Crime Writers' Association and chair of the Books Committee of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

External links

* [http://www.tees.ac.uk/schools/SOH/research_biogs.cfm?adam=true Career sketch at the University of Teesside website]