Childhoods Today

Editorial Board

Editorial Board Members include:

• Professor Myra Bluebond–Langner, Rutgers University
  Myra Bluebond–Langner is a member of the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She teaches cultural anthropology, psychological anthropology, and several courses on medical anthropology. Her first book, The Private Worlds of Dying Children has been translated into several languages and has made her a frequent speaker in Europe and elsewhere. Myra's latest book is In the Shadow of Illness: Parents and Siblings of the Chronically Ill Child.
• Dr Jo Boyden, University of Oxford
  Jo Boyden is Reader in Development Studies and Director of Young Lives at the University of Oxford — a 15–year research programme investigating the causes and consequences of childhood poverty in four countries – namely, Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Vietnam and Peru. While her previous research centred on child labour and young people living with armed conflict and forced migration, in more recent years her research has focused on children's experiences of risk in the context of poverty. Her publications include: (2009) Boyden, J. ‘Risk and Capability in the Context of Adversity: Children's Contributions to Household Livelihoods in Ethiopia’ Children, Youth and Environments 19 (2) http://cye.colorado.edu and (2009) Boyden, J and Cooper, E. ‘Questioning the Power of Resilience: Are Children Up To the Task of Disrupting the Transmission of Poverty?’ in Addison J., Hulme, D. & Kanbur, R. (eds.), Poverty Dynamics: Measurement and Understanding from an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Professor Linda Caldwell, Penn State University
  Linda L. Caldwell is a Professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and Human Development and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Linda is currently the Director of the College of Health and Human Development's Global Leadership Initiative. Her research primarily focuses on interventions that develop youth competencies, promote healthy lifestyles, and reduce risky behaviour in and through leisure. She is the co–developer of two interventions: TimeWise: Taking Charge of Leisure Time and HealthWise South Africa: Life Skills for Young Adults.
• Professor Ferran Casas, University of Girona
  Ferran Casas is Senior Professor of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Girona (Spain). He is a Board member of the ISQOLS (International Society for Quality of Life Studies). He leads ERIDIQV research team (Research Team of Children's Rights and their Quality of Life), at the Research Institute on Quality of Life, University of Girona. Ferran's main topics of research are children's well–being and quality of life, children's rights, adolescents and audiovisual media, and adolescent–parent relationships. At present, he is the coordinator of the Spanish research team of the YIPPEE project(Young People from a Public care background pathways to Education in Europe) which aims to explore the factors – cultural, social, psychological and practical – which encourage and enable young people to continue their education beyond the school years.
• Associate Professor Susan Danby, Queensland University of Technology
  Susan Danby's areas of expertise are in language and social interaction, childhood studies, and early literacy. Her research explicates the everyday social and interactional practices of children, showing their complex and competent work as they build their social worlds within school settings, homes and communities. Susan's methodological interests include ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. She has published in the following areas: qualitative research, classroom discourse, helpline talk, gender, classroom interaction, early childhood education pedagogy, talk and interaction, children's work and play and teacher–student interactions.
• Professor Noel Dyck, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
  Noel Dyck, Professor of Social Anthropology, was educated at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Manchester. The focus of his career thus far has been to explore the social construction and political articulation of contemporary life through the lens of ethnographic inquiry. Recently, Noel's research has focused upon the anthropology of sport, childhood, movement, and urban life. But he has also written extensively about relations between Aboriginal peoples and governments.
• Dr Eva Gulløv, Danish University of Education, Copenhagen
  Eva GulløvÊis an anthropologist who is an Associate Professor at the Danish School of Education. Eva has worked on pre–schools and the encounters between institutions and families with a broad interest in minority children (most of whom are Muslim). In previous projects she has investigated perceptions of pre–schools among minority parents and the encounter between families and the ‘civilizing projects’ of the institutions.
• Professor Roger Hart, City University, New York
  Roger Hart's research has focused on understanding the everyday lives of children and youth and the application of this to a critical engagement with environmental policy, planning and design. In recent years, Roger has been more broadly concerned with developing research and programmes that recognise children and young people's rights as citizens. To this end, he has collaborated in a number of countries with UNICEF and the Save the Children Alliance on research and programmes relating to children's rights to be heard regarding their own development and the development of their communities. In his overseas work he has focused his attention particularly on Latin America. Much of his work has focused on children's play opportunities and the physical and social affordances that influence play.
• Professor Allison James, University of Sheffield
  Allison James is a social anthropologist who has been working in the area of the sociology and anthropology of childhood since the late 1970s. Allison played a significant role in pioneering the theoretical and methodological approaches to research with children which are now central to the field of childhood studies. Much of her work focuses on children as social actors and her research has included work on children's language and culture in relation to theories of socialisation, children's attitudes towards sickness and bodily difference and children's experiences of time at home and at school. Allison is currently the director of the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth at the University of Sheffield and a co–editor of the journal Children & Society.
• Assistant Professor Anne Trine Kjørholt, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
  Anne Trine Kjørholt graduated with a doctoral degree in education at NTNU in 2003 with the thesis title “Childhood as a Social and Symbolic Space: Discourses on Children as Social Participants in Society”. Anne Trine is currently Assistant Professor at NTNU and the director of the Norwegian Centre for Child Research (NOSEB). Anne Trine has been the project leader for a number of research projects exploring topics such as the following: discourses on childhood; children's rights and perspectives; citizenship; children's cultures; early childhood education and care; and children's welfare, time and space.
• Professor Jill Korbin, Case Western Reserve University
  Jill E. Korbin, Ph.D. is Associate Dean, Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Schubert Center for Child Studies, and Co–Director of the Childhood Studies Programme in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Jill serves on the editorial boards for Children & Society, Child Indicators Research, and American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Jill's research interests include culture and human development; neighbourhood, community, and contextual influences on children and families; child maltreatment; and child and adolescent well–being.
• Dr Bekir Onur, Center for Research on Child Culture, Ankara University
  Bekir Onur's main areas of interest include development psychology, child culture, history of childhood, museum education. He is an author of numerous books and articles including Woman, Youth and Sexuality (1986), World with Toys (2002), History of Childhood in Turkey (2005) and Child, History and Society (2007).
• Professor Irene Rizzini, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
  Irene Rizzini is a Professor and a researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and director of the International Center for Research on Childhood (CIESPI). Irene serves as President of Childwatch International Research Network. Irene has been working for many years with a number of organisations that are responsible for social policies and programmes for children in Brazil and abroad, including government departments with responsibility for children in the Federal Government of Brazil, and several Brazilian state governments and municipalities, and a number of nonprofit research and policy centres in Brazil and abroad. She is the author of several books, among which are: Niños, Adolescentes, Marginalidad y Violencia en América Latina y el Caribe: Relaciones Indisociables? (Children and Youth, Marginalization and Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Indissociable Relations?).
• Professor Anne Smith, University of Otago
  Anne Smith is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Anne has been involved in early childhood policy, practice and research since the mid seventies when she was involved in setting up the Dunedin Community Childcare scheme. During her time at Otago, Anne has initiated many advocacy and outreach education activities to disseminate research to professionals working with children, and to impact on policy and practice for children. Anne is a nationally and internationally recognised researcher in early childhood education. Her books include Understanding Children's Development; and (with colleagues) Children's Voices; and Learning in the Making: Disposition and Design in Early Education. In 2009 she received a US award for her research and advocacy to ensure that the voices of children are heard.
• Dr Spyros Spyrou, Cyprus College
  Spyros Spyrou's research focuses on issues of identity construction in childhood, especially as it relates to nationalism, national identity, and immigration. In his work, he is particularly interested in education and children's engagement with processes of cultural production and reproduction. In his previous work he explored issues of poverty and social exclusion in childhood and children's participation in social research as researchers. Currently, he is involved in research that investigates children's participation as a means to preventing and combating violence and in a study of place and identity in childhood that examines children's experiences of crossing the buffer zone in divided Cyprus.
• Professor Nigel Thomas, University of Central Lancashire
  Nigel Thomas is Professor of Childhood and Youth Research at the University of Central Lancashire, and co–director of the Centre for Children and Young People's Participation, established in 2008 to research and promote children and young people's participation. Nigel's doctoral research on participation in decision–making by looked–after children was highly influential. More recently, he led an evaluation of the Children's Commissioner for Wales in partnership with young people. His publications include Children, Family and the State (2002), Social Work with Young People in Care (2005), Children, Politics and Communication (2009) and A Handbook of Children and Young People's Participation (2010). He is a co–editor of the journal Children & Society.
• Dr Kay Tisdall, University of Edinburgh
  Kay Tisdall is currently Programme Director of the MSc in Childhood Studies, and Co–Director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships,at the University of Edinburgh. Kay's research interests are firmly within the interdisciplinary area of childhood studies, with a particular interest in children's rights and children's legislation and policy. Her research topics are diverse, linked by: methodological interests in research with children; theoretical interests in participation, collaboration and rights; and policy interests in ‘joined up’ policy, particularly in relation to disability and children.
• Professor Gill Valentine, University of Leeds
  Gill Valentine has an international reputation for theoretically informed empirical work that is methodologically innovative and has popular and policy impacts. Her research interests include social identities and belonging, children and parenting, consumption cultures (especially in relation to food, drink and gambling) and research methods.
• Professor Martin Woodhead, Open University
  Martin Woodhead is Professor of Childhood Studies at the Open University. He is co–editor of the journal Children & Society, a member of the editorial board for Childhood: Journal of Global Child Research and the advisory board for the Journal of Early Childhood Research. Martin's main research area relates to early childhood development, education and care, including policy studies and extensive international work. He has also carried out research on child labour, and children's rights, including consultancy work for Save the Children, the Council of Europe, OECD, UNICEF, UNESCO and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Martin is also Chair of the International Advisory Board to the Open Society Foundations' Early Childhood Programme.
• Dr Michael Wyness, University of Warwick
  Michael Wyness is Associate Professor in Childhood Studies at the Institute of Education, the University of Warwick. His research interests are in the sociologies of Childhood and Education. His current book Childhood and Society (2006), published by Palgrave, is going into a second edition. His previous books were Contesting Childhood (2000) and Schooling Welfare and Parental Responsibility (1995) both for Falmer Routledge. He is currently working on projects in relation to primary–secondary transitions and social trust in schools. He is associate editor for the journal Children & Society.
• Professor Jens Qvortrup, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  Jens Qvortrup, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at NTNU, Norway. His fields of interest are sociology of childhood, generational relations, welfare research and comparative sociology. He has published extensively about these and other childhood related issues. Among most recent publications is The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies, 2009 (ed. by J. Qvortrup, W. A. Corsaro and M. S. Honig). He was founding president of International Sociological Association's section on sociology (1988–1998) and co–editor of the journal Childhood (1998–2007).
• Dr Deevia Bhana, Associate Professor, University of KwaZulu–Natal
  Deevia Bhana is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of KwaZulu–Natal where she teaches and does research in the areas of gender, sexuality, masculinity studies and HIV/AIDS. She is in the process of writing a book with Rob Morrell, Debbie Epstein and Elaine Unterhalter arising from a DFID British Council funded project and Gender Violence and HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu–Natal Secondary Schools.
• Professor Yolanda Corona, Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico
  Yolanda Corona holds degrees in educational psychology and anthropology. She is a professor and researcher at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico where she directs a national education project on children's rights and opportunities. Yolanda is also a founding member of the Programa Infancia. This programme integrates research, teaching and social service, and supports the enrichment of academic knowledge by information generated by people in NGOs working directly with children in vulnerable situations. Yolanda's current research focuses on rural children, young people's participation in resistance movements, and the ways in which indigenous children participate in their own communities. She has edited several books and journal issues on children in vulnerable situations, participation, and politics.