Childlife 2024

Please note that the programme might be subject to changes.

• 12.00-13.00: Registration. Light lunch available.
• 13.00-13.30: Welcome and greetings.
• 13.30-14.15: Keynote 1: Friederike Kind-Kovács: Childhood at War: 100 Years of Children’s (Violated) Rights.
• 14.15-14.45: Break with refreshments.
• 14.45-16.15: Parallel sessions 1.
• 16.30-18.00: Parallel sessions 2.
• 18.30-22.00: Conference dinner at Årstiden, Stensberggata 26-28.

Please note that the programme might be subject to changes.

• 08.30-09.00: Coffee and light refreshments.
• 09.00: Good morning greetings.
• 09.15-10.00: Keynote 2: Professor Michel Vandenbroeck: Parenting in the neoliberal era: the individualisation of educational responsibilities.
• 10.00-10.30: Break.
• 10.30-12.00: Parallel sessions 3.
• 12.00-13.00: Lunch.
• 13.00-13.45: Keynote 3: Associate Professor Filip Maric: Healthcare, eco-social transformations, and the futures we leave behind.
• 13.45-14.00: Break.
• 14.00-15.30: Parallel sessions 4.
• 15.30-16.00: Break with refreshments.
• 16.00-17.30: Parallel sessions 5.
• 19.00-20.30: Reception in Oslo City Hall. Included in the conference fee. 

Please note that the programme might be subject to changes.

• 08.30-09.00: Coffee and light refreshments. 
• 09.00-09.45: Keynote 4: Professor Erica Burman: Child as method and childlife: thinking ‘child’ and children outside developmentalism but for sustainable lives.
• 09.45-10.00: Break. 
• 10.00-11.30: Parallel sessions 6.
• 11.30-12.30: Lunch. 
• 12.30-14.00: Parallel sessions 7. 
• 14.00-14.15: Break.
• 14.15-15.15: Closing discussion. 

Keynote 1: Friederike Kind-Kovács: Childhood at War: 100 Years of Children’s (Violated) Rights

Friederike Kind-Kovács is senior researcher at the Hannah-Arendt-Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden, Germany.

In 2024 children are experiencing again the everyday brutality of war, be it in Gaza or Ukraine. Children become once again orphans, children are evacuated, children lose their homes and friends, children miss school and education. 

When war erupts children hardly matter and their rights are violated in so many different ways. While the UN demands with its 16th Sustainable Development Goal that “no child should be exposed to violence, abuse or neglect”, children continue to be particularly vulnerable in times of violent conflicts. Their bodies and souls are exposed to physical violence as well as to the emotional traumas of separation, loss, and neglect. 

It is in this year one hundred years ago that the Geneva Declaration formulated for the first time in history the need to–publicly and internationally–recognize children’s most basic rights. Back then the declaration’s 3rd principle demanded that “the child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress”. 

Between the UN’s most recent endeavour to protect children and the demands of the Geneva Declaration back then, a series of conventions were formulated and signed throughout the 20th century, hoping to change children’s fate in times of war and conflict. 
Pursuing a historical perspective, this lecture surveys the history of children’s conventions from 1924 up to today while shedding light on children’s everyday experiences of war and its aftermath. It attempts to tackles the complicated relationship between the violation of children’s rights in wartimes and the often only then formulated public call for the defense and protection of children’s fundamental rights. 

Keynote 2: Michel Vandenbroeck: Parenting in the neoliberal era: the individualisation of educational responsibilities

Michel Vandenbroeck is Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University, Belgium.

Over the last two decades many countries have faces and increase of privatization and commodification of early childhood education and care (ECEC). It is increasingly clear that the promises made by the market (the invisible hand of the market) are far from being realized. 

It has been widely documented how the commodification of ECEC profoundly affects Children, parents and professionals. Parents are increasingly conceptualized as clients, responsible to make the right choice for their children. It is but one of the many changes of parenthood. I will discuss among others: changes in parenting advise, the increasing use of neurosciences and econometric languages, the quantification of educational research and changing vision on parent participation.

While these recent evolutions are independent from each other, they seem to point in the same direction: the individualization of parental responsibilities. I argue that it is time for a re-socialisation of educational responsibilities.

Keynote 3: Filip Maric: Healthcare, eco-social transformations, and the futures we leave behind

Filip Maric is Associate Professor at the Department of Health and Care Sciences physiotherapy at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway.

The subtitle to the 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change prominently contained a bold call-to-action that we are failing to realize: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate. To date, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, rather than decrease, while biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, wars, conflicts, polarization, and other large-scale social and environmental calamity continues to worsen and compound what the lives of today’s children and youth will be defined by. 

Public discourse around climate change tends to oversimplify what needs to be done to address today’s challenges, often placing near exclusive focus on educating and empowering future (adult) generations to deal with the challenges they will eventually experience, and so unduly relegating action and responsibility to indeterminate future. 

All this while the healthcare systems and services, like so many other sectors, paradoxically contribute to leaving increasingly worse futures behind. With the healthcare professions as its anchoring point, this talk will turn the gaze inwards to explore what eco-social transformations are required within healthcare, and through healthcare, now, to shift what the future of today’s children, youth, adults, and elders will be defined by. This will encompass critical perspectives on sustainability and sustainable healthcare, healthcare’s relationship to the environment, and the children we are meant to care for.  

Keynote 4: Erica Burman: Child as method and childlife: thinking ‘child’ and children outside developmentalism but for sustainable lives

Erica Burman is Professor at the Institute of Education, The University of Manchester, UK.

This presentation engages an analytic approach, Child as method, to inform discussion of the role of children and childhood within narratives and practices around sustainability. As a decolonial, feminist intersectional lens, Child as method interrogates and evaluates the role the figure of child, images of children and narratives of development play within discourses around climate catastrophe and climate justice.

Central to this is the need to decentre dominant developmentalist childhood tropes generated from and by the Global North, and to attend instead to the imbrication and interdependent actionality of children.

We invite contributions such as:  

• empirical studies exploring the relationship between childhood and sustainability, providing perspectives for understanding sustainability
• studies and theoretical perspectives on interrelated aspects of children, childhood and sustainability 
• empirical studies on children and young people in everyday life: social, cultural, health and material diversity and inequality in children/young people’s worlds, around the globe
• theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to explorations of children’s lives and of professional practices involving children and young people
• studies of professional and interprofessional practices involving children, young people and their caregivers
• studies of higher education within professional and interprofessional practices with children and young people

More about themes for the conference

Children and young people live diverse everyday lives. As in the preceding conferences, the third international Childlife conference invites contributions covering a broad range of contemporary issues and perspectives concerning children and young people in everyday life and professional practices.

For this conference, we are inspired by the UN sustainable development goals, which address the need for increased action for a more sustainable future. The consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly evident, resulting in extreme weather events and catastrophes. Social inequalities are increasing in many countries, resulting in poverty for many families with children.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, for some years and in various ways, affected the lives of children around the world. In Europe, we have seen a full-scale war, along with other wars around the world, resulting in thousands of children and families having to leave their homes and establish a new life in an unknown country.

Digitalization and social media also affect children’s everyday lives, representing both resources and challenges for children’s family life, participation and exclusion.

These complex conditions affect children and young people in various ways, but all children share the experience of living in an unsafe world with rapid changes. Similarly, these conditions also represent challenges for professionals and institutions engaged in children’s health, education, well-being and welfare, and their collaboration with children, young people and their families.

There is a need for research that, in various ways, provides knowledge about these challenges, and we need research about sustainability at local, national and global levels.

We invite contributions that address some of these themes. The concept of sustainability is used in a broad sense, and we welcome critical perspectives on sustainability.  

The Childlife research group is a research group at Oslo Metropolitan University. The central aim of the group is to investigate the key relationships involved in the everyday lives of children, from birth to the age of 18 years.

An important ambition of the research group is to develop theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and empirical knowledge that embrace the child within and across various institutional, social and cultural contexts. 

OsloMet is a major Norwegian university, with around 21,000 students and 2,100 employees. We offer undergraduate and postgraduate education, in addition to PhD programmes, within the fields of education, health and welfare.