Critical Childhood(s): 100 Years of Children’s Rights

The international conference will take place 3-5 July 2024, organised by the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool.

The Critical Childhood(s) conference is an event jointly organised by the European Children’s Rights Unit (ECRU) at the University of Liverpool, Tema Barn at Linköping University, the Critical Children’s Rights Research Network (CCRR), and supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

The European Children’s Rights Unit (ECRU) at the University of Liverpool will host an interdisciplinary conference showcasing some of the most cutting-edge work in contemporary critical childhood and children’s rights scholarship, marking the centenary of the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924). It aims to look back, critically, at what has been gained in the hundred years since this first international declaration, and to look forward towards the priority issues that affect children’s rights at present, and in the future.

Critical Childhood(s) will bring together scholars working at the vanguard of childhood and children’s rights research, particularly those that work beyond Western models, make use of novel methodologies, study underexplored areas, and provide original theoretical frameworks to the study of childhood and children’s rights. It provides an invaluable opportunity for sharing interdisciplinary knowledge among the arts, humanities and social sciences in the domain of childhood and children’s rights.

A group photo of all conference attendees.

 

Agenda

 

3 July 2024

 

13:00-13:30. Welcome and Registration

13:30-15:00. Conceptions and Representations of Childhood in History (Chair: Helen Stalford)

  • Divya Kannan (Shiv Nadar University) – Debating Compulsion: The State and the Poor in Colonial South India.
  • Noam Peleg (UNSW Sydney) – Revisting Ellen Key’s The Century of the Child
  • Bengt Sandin (Linköping University) – Child time, childhood time: A historical perspective on time in the interpretation of social change.

15:00-15:30. Coffee Break

15:30-17:30. Conceptions and Representations of Childhood: Regional Perspectives (Chair: Deborah Lawson)

  • Manasa Gade (University of Edinburgh) – Playing (and Working) in the City
  • Afua Twum-Danso Imoh (Bristol University) – Destabilising Images of the Competent Adult vs. the Impotent Child Through the Lens of West African Notions of Personhood and Social Relations
  • Chang Liu (UCL) and Yuwei Xu (Nottingham University) - When the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child meets Confucianism: Chinese parents’ understanding of children’s right to play.
  • Nguyen Phuong Uyen (Vietnam National University/ University College Cork) - Is Eastern Childhood Different? Perspective on Childhood and Children’s Rights in Vietnam.

 

4 July 2024

 

9:30 -11:00. Conceptions and Representations of Childhood (Chair: Zaina Mahmoud)

  • Emily Kearon-Warrilow (University of Liverpool) - Contested Boundaries: Problematizing Chronological Age in Defining Childhood in Britain and Colonial India 1880-c.1910
  • Andrea Griffante (Lithuanian Institute of History) - Drawing the Declaration: the UISE world contest (1927-1928) and the interpretation of children’s rights
  • Johanna Sjoberg (Linköping University) - Children and cultural heritage; Participatory rights and a collective child voice

11:00-11:30. Coffee Break

11:30-13:30. Critical Perspectives on Children’s Rights: Theories and Approaches (Chair: Ed Horowicz)

  • Sarada Balagopalan (Rutgers University) – The Temporality of Children’s Rights
  • Didier Reynaert (HO Ghent) – The origins and developments of the children's rights movement in Flanders: A critical account
  • Anna Sparrman (Linköping University) – Unlearning the Child
  • John Wall (Rutgers University) - Children’s Rights in Childist Perspective: Theorizing Normative Empowerment

13:30-14:30. Lunch Break

14:30-16:00. Critical Perspectives on Children’s Rights: Tensions and Exclusions (Chair: Ellie Drywood) 

  • Ylva Ågren (Gothenburg University) - Branding childhood –between commodification, rights and values
  • Anandini Dar (BML Munjal) - Children’s suffrage rights: Imagining political and social justice for children
  • Hedi Viterbo (Queen’s Mary London) - How Child Rights Harm Refugees

16:00-16:15. Coffee Break

16:15-17:30. Roundtable Provocations

 

5 July 2024

 

9:30-11:00. Critical Perspectives on Children’s Rights: Methodologies of Inclusion (Chair: Monique Mehmi)

  • Amy Hanna (Galway University) - The Role of Silence in Theorising Children’s Participation Rights Under the UNCRC
  • Anna Jackson (Liverpool Hope University) - Exploring a new concept of voice in the collaborative, decision-making interactions between 0-3 year olds, their parents and their environment
  • Cara Shaw (University of Liverpool) - Inclusive Design as an Agent of Children’s Disability Rights

11:00-11:30. Coffee Break

11:30-13:00. Critical Perspectives on Children’s Rights: Liminal Childhoods (Chair: Nico Brando) 

  • Levindo Diniz Carvalho (UFMG) and Juliana Prates Santana (UFBA) - The Right to the City and Children in Street Situation in Brazil
  • Karl Hanson (University of Geneva) - Comparing children’s rights critiques. A case study of the travels of juvenile justice and child protection regulations between Belgium and the Congo (1908 – 2009)
  • Joyce Serwaa Oppong (University of Edinburgh) - An Afrocentric perspective on children’s work

13:00-13:15. Nico Brando (University of Liverpool) Wrap-up and thanks

13:15-14:30. Lunch & Screening of “Weaving Knowledge” by Anita Afonu (introduced by Karen Wells)

 

Venue

The conference will take place at the School of Law and Social Justice Building, University of Liverpool. See in Google Maps.

Any queries regarding attendance or registration, please contact: Nico Brando.

Scientific Committee:
• Nicolás Brando – Deputy-Director, ECRU, University of Liverpool
• Bengt Sandin – Emeritus Professor, Tema Barn, Linkoping University
• Helen Stalford – Head of the Liverpool Law School
• Eleanor Drywood – Director, ECRU, University of Liverpool

 

Financially supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), the Derby Fellowship and the Research Development Fund (University of Liverpool).

Back to: Liverpool Law School