Date: 17 July 2025, 18.30-20.30
Location: South House Lecture Theatre, AUB Campus
As part of the AUB Open Lecture Series, Arts University Bournemouth excited to host a debut book launch for Dr Alex Blower, AUB Research Fellow and Founder of Boys’ Impact.
Lost Boys: How Education is Failing Young Working-Class Men combines research, real-life case studies and Alex’s experience of navigating school exclusion.
The open lecture will include a reading from the book by Alex, conversation and Q&A facilitated by Conrad Tracy, AUB academic and documentary photographer, whose work explores working-class culture, identity, and community through long-form visual storytelling.
Copies of the book will be available to buy on the evening, or you can pre-order your copy online
- 18.30-19.00 – Welcome reception
- 19.00-20.00 – Open lecture
- 20.00 onwards – Networking and book signing
Lost Boys: How Education is Failing Young Working-Class Men
Since the mid-2000s, consistent commentary from politicians and media outlets in the UK have presented low educational attainment and low aspiration as defining attributes of working-class boys in education. It has often characterised them as misogynistic, aggressive and unwilling to learn. But how true is this? Combining research, real-life case studies and the author’s experience of navigating school exclusion, this book provides clear recommendations for how to better support the health, wellbeing and vulnerabilities of working-class boys and men through both policy and practice.
Challenging us to reconsider ideas about the role of masculinity in the lives of working-class boys and men, the book asks what would change if, instead of focusing on perceived individual failures, we considered the troubled relationship between working-class boys and the social and educational systems in which they reside.
- “Compelling, compassionate and uncompromising in its honesty. Lost Boys gives me hope.” – Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox, Special Forces Instructor, SAS: Who Dares Wins
- “A game-changing take on masculinity – where sharp research meets raw personal insight.” – Darren McGarvey, author of Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass
- “Alex's readable, honest and passionate book offers a roadmap for hope in the way we see and support young working-class men.” – Sarah Atkinson, CEO, Social Mobility Foundation
- “A beautifully written book. Thoughtful, deeply personal and combining years of practitioner experience, Blower has produced exactly the kind of generous, well-researched and hopeful account of young working-class men we need to counter dominant reactionary narratives.” – Sam Friedman, author of The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged
