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Languages, Linguistics and Film

Centre for Childhood Cultures

Formed in 2016 and based at Queen Mary University of London, the Centre for Childhood Cultures fosters ground-breaking research on children’s everyday lives and experiences, with a special focus on creativity, forms of literacy, and the links between different aspects of childhood culture.

Director

Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature and Childhood Culture, Queen Mary University of London.

Steering Group


Contact us:


For information about the Centre for Childhood Cultures please contact Professor Kiera Vaclavik at k.e.vaclavik@qmul.ac.uk

Activities

Children’s Literature Children’s Lives

The Centre for Childhood Cultures hosts the research seminar series Children’s Literature Children’s Lives. Seminars are given by academics and practitioners and recent events have included Children Behind Bars (railings and reformatories), Children’s Literature and Environmental Citizenship and architecture in children’s picture books. For more information and our upcoming events please visit the Children’s Literature Children’s Lives website or join our mailing list: childlitchildlives@gmail.com

Centre for Childhood Cultures Postgraduate Discussion Group

The Centre for Childhood Cultures holds a Postgraduate and Early-Career Discussion Group which meets monthly to discuss examples of childhood culture and organises research trips. To find out more about the group’s activities please read our blog.

Children's Literature/Children's Lives Research Seminar, Tuesday 28th March 2023

Time: 5.30pm - 7.00pm 
Venue: Bancroft Building, David Sizer Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Sam Arthur

Environmental Futures & Children's Publishing: A Presentation and Q&A with Sam Arthur

Sam Arthur is a founding partner and Creative Director of Nobrow and Flying Eye Books. Since 2008 they have been publishing award winning illustrated books from their East London headquarters. Children’s books include winners of the UK’s prestigious Children’s Book prizes the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal and the Waterstones Picture Book Prize. Amongst their most successful projects are the Hilda comics by Luke Pearson, now a BAFTA and Emmy winning animated series on Netflix.

In this seminar, we'll hear from Sam about the company's publishing approach to environmental issues with reference non-fiction illustrated books series. This will be followed by a Q&A exploring wider trends in publishing in the face of the climate crisis and finally questions from the audience.

This seminar is part of the ongoing activities of the QMUL IHSS Centre for Childhood Cultures

Centre for Childhood Cultures Annual Lecture, Thursday 18th May 2023

Time: 6.00pm - 7.30pm (including a wine reception)
Venue: Bancroft Building, David Sizer Lecture Theatre
Speakers: Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, ecoLogicStudio

AirBubble Playground: re-metabolising urban air through play and human to non-human interaction

In this lecture architects, innovators and researchers Prof. Claudia Pasquero and Dr Marco Poletto, founders of ecoLogicStudio, will outline their pioneering work on photosynthetic architecture, focusing on the AirBubble Playground, the world's first biotechnological playground to integrate air-purifying micro-algae. To date, AirBubble has had iterations in Warsaw, Glasgow, Riyadh, Cairo and Nyon.

Incorporating the Photo.Synthetica technology for the advanced integration of photosynthesis in the built environment, it is a direct response to the issue of air pollution, identified by WHO as the biggest global threat to health. The lecture will consider the wide-ranging applications of this project and the ways in which children themselves take part in the process of urban air re-metabolization, interacting with the morphology of the playground and the microalgae to change the local air quality condition.

This event is welcome to all across Queen Mary and beyond, and is designed as a contribution to the ongoing IHSS Research Programme, Environmental Futures.

Centre for Childhood Cultures Annual Lecture, 19th May 2022

Professor Erica Burman
Putting 'Child as Method' to Work?

Queen Mary University of London, David Sizer Lecture Theatre at 6pm

In this lecture, Prof Burman will outline the conceptual resources informing 'Child as method', an analytical approach she has developed. Drawing on postcolonial and migration studies, 'Child as method' explicates the necessary inscriptions of 'child' and 'development' across economic, sociocultural, and individual trajectories that position children and childhood as a key contributor to, and reflection of, wider geopolitical dynamics. In addition, Prof Burman will offer some examples of the interpretive and methodological possibilities of 'Child as method', alongside some further discussion of its other analytical contributions.

Being Human Festival, 11-20th November 2021

Queen Mary held a series of events as part of Being Human Festival.  

These included Kiccha!, a screening of films made as part of the Stories from Home project; Reimagining my city, a zine-making workshop for 7-13 year olds drawing inspiration from historical magazines created by East London children on the 13th, and How Queer Everything is Today!, a museum-wide programme of events at the V&A engaging with the world of Lewis Carroll, organised by us (Kathleen, Lucie and Kiera). Other relevant events reflected on the publication of child poetry anthology Stepney Words in 1971 and subsequent school strikes, and included the premier of a new film by young writers from Barking and Dagenham.

 

Rethinking Childhood Studies Today

The Centre for Childhood Cultures, along with the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, is supporting the 2021 Early-Career workshop series Rethinking Childhood Studies Today. This series will be dedicated to the subject of ‘Childhood Studies’, broadly conceived. Through this thematic lens, this series will bring into focus issues relating to children and childhood, ranging across geography, anthropology, sociology, education, politics, law, children’s literature and modern languages. These issues will be contextualised within, and examined in light of, wider societal, methodological, and theoretical challenges.

There will be three events, Understanding Experience: Approaches to the Histories of Children and Youth’ (guest speaker Dr Simon Sleight, KCL), ‘How to think about Children: Kinship-Model Approaches to Agency’ (guest speaker Professor Marah Gubar, MIT) and ‘Putting “Children First”? Tentative Explorations of Alternative Imaginaries’ (panel with Dr Rachel Rosen, UCL and Dr Hedi Viterbo, QMUL) with a final invite only workshop.

Online Seminar Series (via Zoom)
Queen Mary University of London, April-June 2021

poster for rethinking childhood series with image of children holding megaphone

 

Co-sponsored by the Queen Mary Institute for the Humanities and Social Science and the Queen Mary Centre for Childhood Cultures the research seminar series Rethinking Childhood Studies Today, is dedicated to the subject of ‘Childhood Studies’, broadly conceived. Through this thematic lens, this series will bring into focus issues relating to children and childhood, ranging across geography, anthropology, sociology, education, politics, law, children’s literature and modern languages. These issues will be contextualised within, and examined in light of, wider societal, methodological, and theoretical challenges.

All events are free but please book via Eventbrite.

Download the poster: poster for CCC rethinking childhood studies today [PDF 134KB]

 

Research conversation

Understanding Experience: Approaches to the Histories of Children and Youth

Dr Simon Sleight

Thursday 22 April, 4-5.30pm

poster for rethinking childhood series event one with photo of children carrying papers

 

In this research conversation, Dr Simon Sleight (Department of History, King's College London) will join Professor Alastair Owens, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, to discuss means and methods for exploring histories of youth from the late nineteenth century to the present. Looking beyond categories of 'agency', the concept of 'experience' is proposed as a conduit for productive understandings, and a variety of source types, settings and concepts are assessed to help scholars recover the feel and fabric of the past.

Download the poster: Poster for CCC Rethinking Childhood Seminar 1 Sleight [PDF 184KB]

Listen to the recording here

 

Research conversation

How to think about Children: Kinship-Model Approaches to Agency

Professor Marah Gubar

Thursday 6th May 4-5:30pm

poster for rethinking childhood seminars second seminar including photo of two children, one with arm round the other's shoulder

 

In this research conversation Professor Marah Gubar (Department of Literature, MIT) will join Professor Kiera Vaclavik and Dr Rachel Bryant Davies, (Department of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary) to discuss themes relating to the kinship-model approach to agency.

Book via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/marah-gubar-how-to-think-about-children-tickets-145474513185

Download the poster: Poster for CCC Rethinking Childhood Seminar 2 Gubar [PDF 116KB]

Panel Discussion

Putting 'Children First'? Tentative Explorations of Alternative Imaginaries

Panel: Professor Rachel Rosen (UCL Institute of Social Research), Dr Hedi Viterbo (Law, QMUL), Dr Rachel Humphris (Sociology and Politics, QMUL)

Thursday 24th June, 4-5:30pm

poster for rethinking childhood 3rd event with photo showing a group of children walking past encampment

In this panel discussion Prof Rachel Rosen (Education, University College London), Dr Hedi Viterbo (Law, Queen Mary) and Dr Rachel Humphris (Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary) will critically reflect on policies that ‘put children first’. The discussion will focus on issues in child migration and youth justice policies, while considering possible implications for other child-related areas.Putting 'Children First'? Tentative Explorations of Alternative Imaginaries

Book via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/panel-discussion-putting-children-first-tickets-145484370669

Download the poster: Poster for Rethinking Childhood Seminar 3 Rosen [PDF 238KB]

Listen to the recording here

 Brave New Worlds: YA Creative Writing Workshop and launch of YA novel Folked Up

Charlotte Byrne (in conversation with Abigail Fine).

Tuesday 3rd March, 5:30 – 8pm. St Margaret’s House.

The Centre for Childhood Cultures launched Charlotte Byrne’s debut novel Folked Up.

Charlotte led a 60-minute creative writing workshop followed by a reading from the novel and Q&A. Full details on the Children’s Literature Children’s Lives website.

 

 

Attendees at Creative Writing Workshop and Folked Up book launch, 2020. ©Yellow Ladybird Photography.

All images ©Yellow Ladybird Photography.

Annual Lecture

“Dare Boldly”: Children's Literature and Environmental Citizenship’

Prof Karen Kilcup, Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of English, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

13 June 2019.

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