Robert V. Adams

right
Robert V. Adams, who also writes under Robert Adams and R V Adams among other names, is an English author and educator who has written crime novels and 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 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, devoted to developing innovative ways of keeping children and young people at risk and in trouble out of the criminal justice system. This led to the book A Measure of Diversion which he co-authored in 1981.
Adams gave up full time employment to devote most of his time to developing his writing interests and to developing ways of empowering authors to challenge the contemporary world of publishing, dominated by mass publishers, by exploiting self-publishing, small publishing and Print on Demand or POD. He founded a small publishing enterprise, Bitterne Books and from 2000 worked for the setting up in 2010 of the Writers' Guild Books Cooperative, which he chairs.
Adams' non-fiction books include Foundations of Complementary Therapies and Alternative Medicine (2010), The Short Guide to Social Work (2010), Foundations of Health and Social Care (2007), Empowerment, Participation and Social Work (2008) (in its fourth edition after more than 20 years continuously in print, selling worldwide and translated into several languages, Protests by Pupils (1991), The Abuses of Punishment (1998), The Personal Social Services (1996), Social Policy for Social Work (2002), Prison Riots in Britain and the USA (1992) (in two editions, published in Britain and the USA) and the co-edited best-selling trilogy of social work books now in multiple editions (2009): Social Work: themes, issues and critical debates, Critical Practice in Social Work and Practising Social Work in a Complex World.
Adams is interested in the development of innovative ways of teaching and learning, using new technologies to empower students. For six years from the founding of the Open Polytechnic by a consortium of about two dozen polytechnics, later renamed the Open Learning Foundation at the turn of 1989 to 1990, Adams was academic coordinator at first in social work and later as head of health and social services, commissioning and publishing scores of books. Later, he was awarded the first Chair of Human Services Development at the University of Lincoln. For many years, he held the part time position of Professor of Social Work in the School of Health & Social Care at Teesside University in Middlesbrough.
In addition to his many research and academic works, Adams has written fiction for adults and children for many years, some under different pseudonyms. His poetry has been published in magazines and two book collections.
Robert 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. Written under Robert V Adams, his psychological thriller Antman was published in 2005 and his crime novel The Really Dreadful Crime Company was published by Night Publishing in 2011. 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 until 2010 was chair of the Books Committee of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. He was chair of the Guild's Best Book Award in 2008 and a reader for this in 2010, as well as being a juror for the European Literary Awards.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu