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The Critical Childhood Studies Centre (CCSC) provides a focal point for innovative research, teaching, and public engagement at °×С½ãÂÛ̳ on the complex links between unequal childhoods and social justice.

CCSC researchers examine how social, political, cultural, and economic changes affect childhoods – including their material, symbolic, and visual representation – as well as children and young people’s contributions and creative responses to dynamic global contexts. Ultimately, we seek to improve the social status of childhood, help to realise children’s human rights, and explore new possibilities for achieving social justice with and for children and young people.

Members of CCSC constitute a diverse group of multi-disciplinary scholars from across °×С½ãÂÛ̳. We share an understanding of childhood as social phenomenon and contribute to debates about the ways in which the way the figure of the child and its boundaries (e.g., with adulthood) are produced and governed with real effects for all. We view those positioned as children as an often-marginalised social group at the intersections of generation, race, class, gender, (dis)ability, and nation. We endorse and develop critical and non-normative approaches to the study of childhood including childism, anti-racism, decolonialism, feminism, and materialism.  We see such approaches as enabling critical examination of the often-overlooked ways that childhood is experienced and mobilised as a symbol and social position in contexts of slow and structural violence, old and new inequalities, and contested geopolitical and economic formations.

The dynamic scholars who make up the CCSC have an established reputation for high quality, ethical research and public engagement informed by children and young people – bringing their experiences, insights, and social positions into the heart of knowledge production, policy, and practice. Our members have been called upon to shape social policy, contribute to media debates, and support civil society organisations and leaders to engage ethically and reflexively with children and young people’s perspectives and experiences.

Since its founding in 2020 as a research group, the Centre has promoted lively intellectual dialogue aimed at bridging multi-disciplinary research, activism, and policy making and fostering a collegial and supportive environment across all career stages. We host work-in-progress workshops for PhDs and early career researchers as well as public seminars and events with international guests.

International partners

Our international partners include:

•  at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)
• (Brasil)
• (Chile)
• (University of Warsaw, Poland) |