February 2003
News

Successful International Childhood Conference

The recently-established Joint Centre for the Social Study of Childhood has held its third international conference, 'The Politics of Childhood', at the University of Hull.

The Centre is located in the Department of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences at Hull and the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities at Bradford.

Hull's Denison Centre welcomed over 100 delegates from all over the world to participate in what one American visitor described as "the high point of his recent academic adventures".

A proposal has now been drawn up for an edited volume of the best papers given at the conference.

The conference opened with a plenary address by one of the Co-Directors of the Centre, Dr Allison James, who set out the interdisciplinary themes of the conference.

The Centre's second Co-Director, Professor Adrian James, said: "The interdisciplinary nature of the conference was greatly in evidence in the wide spread of papers, including several given by Bradford staff, engaging in so many rich and different ways with the politics of childhood."

Highlights of the conference included the Director of the Refugees Council, Nick Hardwick, who gave his audience an insight into the plight of refugee children in the UK, and Professor Irene Rizzini, from the International Centre for Research on Childhood in Rio de Janeiro, who gave a moving account of the biographical trajectories of Brazilian street children when faced with the state's attempts to institutionalise and control them.

Meanwhile, Professor John O'Neil from Toronto amused the audience with his historical tale of the rise and demise of the American family as witnessed through movies. And three young people, representatives from young people's organisations, described their own experiences of participation and the tokenism that sometimes occurs.

In the closing panel delegates reflected on what they had learned from the conference.

One American delegate said: "I am now thinking deeply about the role of children and children's issues in political movements ... and talking to people far and wide about the advanced state of academic and political thinking in the UK."

11 February 2002

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