Professor Gigi Gutiérrez
Youth Advocate, Mediator and Trainer
Professor Gigi Gutiérrez is an ethnographer and conflict resolution specialist whose work focuses on the lived experiences of young people navigating systemic failure, trauma, and conflict. Drawing on her background as a social scientist, conflictolgist and mediator, Gigi’s practice integrates research with frontline delivery, amplifying youth voices and driving meaningful reform.
She is the author of the powerful ethnographic chapter A Profoundly Neglected Borough, which explores the intersection of poverty, structural violence, and youth resilience. Gigi’s projects have spanned community mediation, school-based interventions, and cross-cultural initiatives, including collaborative work with mediators in the UK and US to empower young people as agents of change.
At Bridging the Gap 2026, Gigi will share insights from her research and practice on “The Overlooked Link Between Family Law and the School-to-Prison Pipeline”.
Family law and the school-to-prison pipeline are closely connected through factors relating to custody disputes, economic hardship, domestic violence, and foster care placement. These legal and familial challenges often create instability and trauma for children, which can lead to behavioral issues in school. Instead of receiving support, these students are frequently met with punitive discipline, increasing their risk of entering the juvenile justice system. While family law doesn't directly cause the pipeline, it often shapes the conditions of funneling youth toward incarceration.
Gigi’s session promises to challenge perspectives and inspire delegates to think differently about how we support vulnerable children and families.
Day 1 - Professor Gigi Gutiérrez, Lucy Morrison-Childs & Katy Harris | Breakout
Little Feelings, Big Systems: Emotional Education is a Justice Issue
Who it will interest
Education leaders and teachers, mediators, family lawyers, social workers, youth justice and early help practitioners, safeguarding professionals
What this session is about
This session explores how early emotional development, family instability and system responses shape later outcomes across education, safeguarding and justice.
In the first half, Katy Harris and Gigi Gutiérrez trace the pathway from early relational stress to adolescent exclusion and criminalisation. Katy examines how emotional regulation develops within relationships and how conflict, instability and chronic stress shape children’s behaviour. She explores how unmet needs are frequently misread by adults and institutions as defiance, intent or character rather than adaptation to pressure.
Gigi carries this forward into adolescence, showing how these early misinterpretations can harden over time. She examines how punitive school responses, exclusionary discipline and instability can accelerate marginalisation and contribute to what is often described as the school to prison pipeline. Drawing on her restorative justice and youth mediation work, she reframes accountability as something that must sit alongside regulation, repair and stability rather than punishment alone.
Together, they argue that emotional education is not a wellbeing extra but a justice intervention.
In the second half, Lucy Morrison Childs leads a practical exploration of what prevention looks like in delivery through the Resolve Enrichment Programme, supported by Katy. This applied section moves from theory to implementation, demonstrating how conflict literacy, emotional regulation and de escalation skills can be taught early before patterns solidify into exclusion, safeguarding intervention or court involvement.
Drawing on school-based work delivered internationally, including mediation training with students in under resourced communities in Texas, the speakers reflect on why schools need structured conflict education now more than ever. They outline how equipping young people with conflict de escalation skills strengthens resilience, improves school culture and reduces escalation across systems. They also explore how this work will continue to develop internationally, supporting the next generation with practical tools for communication, accountability and repair.
Key themes
Emotional regulation as prevention
How stress and unmet needs present as behaviour
Family instability and its impact on school functioning
Exclusion, marginalisation and the school to prison pipeline
Punishment versus support, accountability and stability
Teaching conflict skills early before patterns harden
Cross system responsibility rather than silo thinking
International collaboration and youth empowerment
What delegates will gain
A developmental and systemic lens linking childhood stress to adolescent justice outcomes
Clear language for reframing behaviour and resistance
Insight into how punitive systems can accelerate exclusion
A practical model for delivering early conflict education in schools
Understanding of scalable train the trainer approaches
A stronger prevention narrative linking education, family justice and safeguarding
How it connects to other sessions
Bridges the neuroscience foundations into real world systems and educational practice. Strengthens the case for early, relational and non-adversarial intervention and provides a practical counterpoint to court focused discussions by showing what changes when skills are built before families and young people enter crisis systems. Complements later ethical discussions about interpretation, responsibility and safeguarding by reinforcing that prevention begins long before formal decision making.