Children and childhood

In addition it includes critical examinations of family law, policy and practice and particularly their concerns with child poverty and adoption. Questions of change and continuity and their effects upon the constructions, meanings and experiences of childhood are also a feature as is methodological innovation in research projects.  

Past projects include ‘Different Childhoods’ (completed in 2006) that was funded by the ESRC and explored the construction of childhood through an examination of children’s typical and atypical work. Two groups of young people who perform unusual working activities were examined in detail: young carers and language brokers. Investigators for this project were Lindsay O'Dell (Lecturer, OU Faculty of Health & Social Care) and Sarah Crafter (Lecturer, OU Faculty of Education and Language Studies), with Guida de Abreu - Oxford Brookes and Tony Cline - UCL.

People involved in work in the Children and Childhood theme include: Phil Bates, Brid Featherstone, Janet Fink, Mary Jane Kehily, Helen Lomax, Jane McCarthy, Lindsay O’Dell, Dr Sharon Pinkney. 

Alongside and including individual research interests, there are currently 2 projects in this theme:

Childhoods, Communities and Social Inequalities

Investigators: Helen Lomax (Senior Lecturer, OU Faculty of Health & Social Care) and Janet Fink (Senior Lecturer, OU Faculty of Social Sciences)

This project is linked to the ESRC Seminar Series (2009-2011), Visual Dialogues: New Agendas in Inequalities Research. It explores the potential of the visual for understanding the forms and experiences of disadvantage that shape children’s lives in local communities and for stimulating wider public conversations about the visual portrayal of social inequalities in contemporary Britain.

Neurodiverse Childhoods

Investigators: Lindsay O’Dell (Lecturer, OU Faculty of Health & Social Care) with Charlotte Brownlow, University of Western Queensland, Australia and Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Umea University, Sweden)

This project draws on critical disability studies to critique deficit models of autism. The notion of autistic space has been developed to explore how NT and autistic spaces may permit or disable particular forms of activity. We have focussed on the development of friendships, examining both face-to-face and online communities and ways in which it is possible to make friends across the neurodiverse spectrum.

Please find more information on the Children, young people, parenthood and families pages from the Faculty of Health of Social Care and the Children's Research Centre website.