The Cathy Urwin prize for work with greatest impact on practice: Shiori Tagawa

Understanding the role of host families in supporting displaced war orphans in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Shiori Tagawa The experiences of internally displaced people are under-researched, even though their numbers are about double that of refugees. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the third-largest number of internally displaced people in the …

The Barrie Thorne Prize for Best Overall Academic Achievement: Karen Marwick

First of all, let me introduce myself, my name is Karen Markwick, I have five children (all teenagers now), and I have worked in the education sector for over ten years. While practicing in education I was never interested in teaching in the traditional sense. I was much more interested in how children feel, their …

Clothing Makes the Child: The Nineteenth-Century Children’s Fancy Dress Ball

We are delighted that CIRCY member, Fiona Gould, an International Junior Research Associate working with Dr Hannah Field on the AHRC research network 'Not Only Dressed but Dressing: Clothing, Childhood, Creativity', launches our first 10th anniversary blog for 2021-22. Fiona’s work captures our theme of the year -  ‘Childhoods: Then, Now, and Future’ – with …

‘Pulling It All Together: One PhD CIRCY researcher reflects on writing the last stages of her PhD during the COVID Pandemic’

By May Nasrawy, CIRCY doctoral researcher I want to share some of my writing reflections which draw on my doctoral experience, and particularly the final year of the writing of my thesis. Writing wasn’t quite the terrifying experience I’d feared when I began my doctoral journey, having heard some of my former PhD peers talking …

A Type of Forgetting: Academy teachers’ experiences of self-appraisal and some rhetorical questions this raises in relation to children and young people

Martin Brown, PhD researcher, School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex In this blog which foregrounds the academy school as currently constituted in England, I consider teachers’ experiences of ‘self-appraisal’ – the subject of my PhD thesis. In so doing, I wish to leave the reader with some rhetorical questions about the implications …

In Conversation: Martin Bittner and Rebecca Webb

Governing children’s lives during Covid-19 through educational regulatory practices CIRCY were delighted to welcome Georg Rißler and Martin Bittner (Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany) to lead our winter seminar on 4 February 2021. Georg and Martin shared a German Covid-19 pandemic context of educational research they are currently conducting.  This blog is a vignette of reflective discussion …

On hope and certainty in education

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com One thing that feels like it unites across educational practice discourses, across paradigms and even across pandemics is hope. The act of education is in itself hopeful. This is whether it is instrumentally concerned with creating the adults of the future or more existentially concerned with immanent becomings. There is …

Listening To Children in a Care Home Setting in a Time of Covid

CIRCY co-director, Rebecca Webb is in conversation with Steven Crowe, University of Sussex and Childhood and Youth alumni and manager of a residential home for children During the early days of the first Covid-19 lockdown in the spring of this year, I was fortunate enough to pass Steven Crowe, former BA in Childhood and Youth …

Light over here please….

My background is in social work and my research has focused on psychosocial approaches, family practices and social work. Until I started in my post I would not have considered my own childhood through the lens of ‘kinship care’.  I grew up in a family where children were sometimes cared for by relatives other than …

Reflecting on participatory methods and methodologies for research with children and young people

By Michelle Lefevre (CIRCY Director) and Rebecca Webb (CIRCY Co-Director) A particularly thought-provoking and enriching session of our CIRCY postgraduate researchers’ network took place on 16.9.20, requested by several members who are contemplating, currently involved in, or who have extensive professional experience of working with children and young people in ‘participatory’ ways. The session facilitated …