We are pleased to formally open the submission of abstracts for the following conference, to take place at the University of Warwick, 19-20 April 2018.
‘From Trauma to Protection: the twentieth century as the children’s century’ seeks to interrogate historical issues surrounding children’s rights, victimhood and agency from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. More has been done in the twentieth century to offer humanitarian, medical and legal protection to the bodily and emotional integrity of the child, but this has often emerged concurrently with the widespread exposure of children to domestic violence, war and genocide. Papers from scholars working in a wide variety of historical fields and national contexts are welcome and submissions from postgraduate and early careers researchers are particularly encouraged.
A full copy of the call for papers can be found here. This page will be updated in due course with more information concerning the conference, and opportunities for registration. The keynote speaker is confirmed as Dr Manon Pignot (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne).
Abstracts dealing with the following themes are encouraged, but not exclusively:
- Historical constructions of notions of trauma, maltreatment and resilience as they relate to childhood in the long twentieth century
- Historical and other perspectives on the development of children’s rights, and analyses of their related discourses
- Efforts to bring aid to children, and the responses proposed by adults to children’s trauma or violence; from state social workers to NGOs like the UN, Red Cross or Save the Children; particularly as these organisations seek to move from theory to practice
- Evidence for children’s agency in navigating these experiences
- Methodological approaches for exploring and retrieving children’s agency, experiences and presence in relation to histories of rights, trauma and maltreatment
- The interactions of the familial and domestic to the political and social spheres
Scholars are invited to submit abstracts of no more 250 words, including the title, for papers of 20 minutes. Please send these to the review panel by no later than 30th September 2017.
We hope to be able to waive registration and accommodation fees for speakers in order to encourage postgraduate participation but are not currently in a position to offer transport bursaries.