*Apologies for crossposting*

 

RGS-IBG 2023: Climate changed geographies, London, 29 August - 1 September

Researching climate change with diverse youth, children and families: empirical insights and methodological challenges

Sponsored by Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (confirmed); Participatory Geographies Research Group (awaiting confirmation)

Session convenors: Catherine Walker, Newcastle University [log in to unmask] ; Susanne Bӧrner, University of Birmingham [log in to unmask]

 

Research into children, young people and climate change is rapidly expanding, alongside concurrent media and scientific interest in issues such as eco-anxiety, youth climate activism and climate justice. Whilst scholars across disciplines are attending to issues of intergenerational justice (Thew et al., 2020) and the effects of climate change on young bodies and minds (Burke et al., 2018; Hickman et al., 2021), growing enquiry focuses on children and young people’s agency to respond to - or even to shift societal responses to - climate change (Hayward, 2021; Thew, 2018; Verlie & Fynn, 2022).

 

Child and youth geographers have made important steps towards exploring and conceptualising children and young people’s agency to act on climate change along lines of intersecting social difference and disadvantage (Arya & Henn, 2023; Bӧrner et al., 2021; Walker 2021). However, there is both the potential and need to connect child and youth-focused scholarship on the everyday geographies of social disadvantage with scholarship on climate change as a chronic, lived experience (Few et al. 2022) and an object of social concern for children, young people, their families and communities. Such connections might include - but are not limited to - exploring climate change with children and young people in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, racialized young people, neuro-diverse young people, indigenous or migrant-background young people and/or gender-diverse young people.

 

This session invites presentations from scholars:

• who are drawing aspects of social difference and diversity into research on children, youth and climate change, or;
• whose research with diverse children, youth and families has – by design or the leading of participants – turned towards climate change and related concerns.

We are interested in papers presenting empirical findings and/or reflections on the ethical and methodological challenges of (and barriers to) encompassing attention to social difference and diversity in child and youth-focused climate change research.

Inclusivity statement: We welcome the Chair’s Statement on Inclusivity and Safety at the conference. We welcome a range of presentation formats in this session, for example, discussion-based, dialogic presentations, short videos followed by reflections from the presenter/s and audience or any other suggestions. We would love to hear from diverse presenters including action researchers, those in or working with youth activist groups, early career researchers and PhD students. Guest passes are granted at the discretion of the sponsoring research groups, but as convenors we are happy to coordinate applications for guest passes from unwaged academics or those outside of academia.

We intend the session to be in-person.

Please send your title, abstract (max. 300 words), and list of authors with contact details to Catherine Walker ([log in to unmask]) and Susanne Bӧrner ([log in to unmask]) by 10th March 2023.

We look forward to hearing from you!

References

 

• Arya, D. & Henn, M. 2023. ‘The impact of economic inequality and educational background in shaping how non-activist ‘standby’ youth in London experience environmental politics. Educational Review 75:1.
• Bӧrner, S., Kraftl, P. & Giatti, L. L. 2021. ‘Blurring the ‘-ism’ in youth climate crisis activism: everyday agency and practices of marginalized youth in the Brazilian urban periphery’. Children’s Geographies 19:21.
• Burke, S. E. L., Sanson, A. V. & Van Hoorn, J.  2018. ‘The psychological effects of climate change on children’. Current Psychiatry Reports, 20.5:35.
• Few, R., Burneo, T.,  Barclay, J., Oven, K.; Phillips, J. and Rosser, N. 2022. Working with communities on disaster risk research: Reflections from cross-disciplinary practice. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction; 70: 102815.
• Hayward, B. 2020. Children, Citizenship and Environment (#SchoolStrike edition). Abingdon: Earthscan from Routledge. 
• Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, E.R., Mayall, E. E., Wray, B., Mellor, C. & van Susteren, L. 2021. ‘Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: A global survey’. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5:12.
• Thew, H. 2018. Youth participation and agency in the United Nations framework convention on climate change. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 18:3.
• Thew, H., Middlemiss, L. & Paavola, J. 2020. ‘“Youth is not a political position”: Exploring justice claims-making in the UN climate change negotiations.’ Global Environmental Change 61.
• Verlie, B. & Flynn, A. 2022. “School strike for climate: A reckoning for education”. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 38:1.
• Walker, C. 2021. “‘Generation Z’ and ‘second generation’: an agenda for learning from cross-cultural negotiations of the climate crisis in the lives of second generation immigrants” Children’s Geographies 19:21.

 

 

 

Dr Catherine Walker

Newcastle University Academic Track (NUAcT) Fellow

See my publications at Google Scholar

Explore creative resources from my recent ESRC New Investigator ‘Young People at a Crossroads’ project