The ENCOUNTER project (the Faculty of Humanities) in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Social Sciences and Hybernská Campus open call for abstract for an international conference "Children and Youth Perspectives. Theory, Research and Practice in European context."

The conference takes place in Prague on September 14 - 15, 2023.

The Abstract deadline: March 31, 2023

A critique of the adult-centred theory and research methods traditionally used in the exploration of children and adolescent‘s development and lives entered the discourse of social sciences in the 1990s with the theory of New Sociology of Childhood (James and Prout, 1997), arguing that children1 and young people are in traditional discourses considered by adults as incompetent in their skills before developing into fully respectable adults. In terms of research, children and youth are traditionally treated as research subjects who provide the data in adult-centred categories on children’s themes, resulting in information about children that is directed, analysed, and produced by adults in adult-centred views. In addition, the discussion of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has ignited the discussion on the implementation of children’s rights in children’s daily encounters with social institutions, such as family, education and schools, social services, health services, law institutes etc. The child-centred perspective aims to acknowledge, address and empower children’s voice and active agency considering children as active social agents with their experiences and perspectives that are relevant to society. Yet, traditional discourses and related social policies on children and childhood still present barriers to child-centred perspective, inclusion, and active participation of children in democratic institutions and societies. This recent development in social sciences is embedded in the new discipline of Childhood (Children’s) studies with an interdisciplinary approach to the child, children, and childhood. With a child-centred focus, new research methods are friendly to children’s mode of communication, allowing active participation in research and thus more authentic exploration of children’s experiences and perspectives of the lived social phenomena in question.

To contribute to the current discussion on a child-centred perspective and further development of Childhood/Children‘s studies in the EU and the Czech context, we invite, academics, researchers, PhD. candidates, and practitioners to present the research and theoretical/conceptual papers, posters, symposium of the 3-5 papers, and reflections on child-centred evidence-based practice in social institutions, on the following topics:

1. The child-and-youth-centred approach, in theory, policy, research and applied evidence-based practice in the EU and the Czech context

2. Interdisciplinarity and latest development in child-centred perspective and dicipline of Childhood/Children's studies

3. Concepts of child’s agency, power, empowerment, autonomy, participation and children’s voice in the theory of Childhood/ Children's studies

4. UN CRC and Children’s rights in theory, research, policy, current debate and evidence-based practice in the EU and the Czech context

5. Arts-based and participatory child-centred research methodologies and methods and application in exploration of children's experiences, percetions, rights and child-centred evidence based evaluation and practice

6. Arts-based and participatory child-centred research with rural children, youth and young adults (up to 25 years) in EU context

7. Arts-based and participatory child-centred research with urban children, youth and young adults (up to 25 years) in EU context

8. Youth mentoring and the perspective of Childhood/Children's studies in the EU context

The Call for abstracts was closed on 31. March 2023.

Thank you for all your submissions.

Abstracts are now proceeding with the peer-review. Participants will be informed about the decisions and further organisational info at the end of April/Beginning of May 2023.

Conference registration is possible for participants without presentations until 30. June 2023 here.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Book of abstracts will be generated and distributed to all conference participants. Selected abstracts and presentations will be called as conference proceedings for Special Issue on the conference themes, details TBC.

CONFERENCE FEES		CONTACT DETAILS
Conference participant	130 Euro / 3000 CZK	children.youth.perspectives@fhs.cuni.cz
Conference participant with presentation	150 Euro / 3500 CZK
PhD. students	100 Euro / 2500 CZK

The poster