**Apologies for cross-posting: call for papers, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Conference, London, 26th-29th August 2014**
Title: Stepping out of the academy and into the museum - challenges and opportunities in collaboration with children, young people and families
Sponsored by: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group
Session convenors: Carey Newson (Queen Mary University of London & the Geffrye Museum of the Home) and Eithne Nightingale (Queen Mary University of London & the V & A Museum of Childhood)
Chair: Alison Blunt (Queen Mary University of London)
For researchers working with children, youth and families, collaborating with museums offers rich opportunities for public engagement and the cross- fertilisation of ideas. With museums increasingly reaching out to communities, they open new and exciting avenues for participation in research and provide new and more accessible forms of dissemination through galleries, exhibitions and the web. Crucially, they facilitate more democratic practices, enabling different voices to be heard, different lives to be made visible.
With innovative and evolving ways of working however come new ethical and methodological challenges. In the context of work involving children, youth and families especially, it is important to think through the implications for the project and its participants at every stage. What are the implications for example where participants see aspects of their lives represented within a public space rather than in an academic journal? Working across professional boundaries also generates both creative synergies and creative challenges. How do organisations such as universities or museums differ on such issues as anonymity, children’s rights, sensitivity around such issues as migration, and respect for and quality of material that is accessioned into collections? Given that professional cultures can operate according to different tacit assumptions and hold different principles dear, new protocols may be needed to reconcile these in the context of collaboration.
This session invites delegates to reflect on their own experience of working on collaborative projects both between museums and academia and with children, young people and families, either as a researcher or a museum professional. Delegates might discuss to what extent they have involved children, young people and families in the research process and/or a related output. Or they may wish to explore the role they have played in identifying positive synergies and working through the competing priorities of the different partners whilst also acting as an advocate for the research participants.
We call for short papers (10 minutes each) to explore the issues arising from such collaborations, with reference to specific projects. We welcome contributions from both researchers and museum professionals. The papers are intended to reflect on the experiences of these projects and raise questions that will frame further discussion and debate. The session will include plenty of opportunity for delegate participation and we would also be interested to hear from researchers who are not submitting a paper but have a project-related interest in these themes.
Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Carey Newson ([log in to unmask]) by Friday February 28 2014.
Further information about the conference is available at:http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+international+conference.htm
Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number SC021474
Winner: Times Higher Education’s Widening Participation Initiative of the Year 2009 and Herald Society’s Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en.html
Winner: Times Higher Education’s Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland partners.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,15691,en.html
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