Membership of the Geographies of Children Youth and Families Research Group is currently available to any member of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Becoming a member of the group enables you to take part in and help develop the exciting, innovative work that the group engages in. Participation in activities developed and supported by the group are excellent ways to disseminate research findings and develop new research ideas in a supportive and friendly group environment. Many have found these activities particularly useful in enabling new and established researchers to develop routes to publication, for example within journal special issues and edited book collections developed through the work of the group.
If you would like to become a member, please download and complete the form on the RGS-IBG website or contact the Secretary: John Barker, Brunel University.
The group also has a JISC mailing list whereby announcements are made to education and research communities about the group’s workshops, conferences and publications. It also provides a forum for the discussion and debate of issues of interest to the group. The list currently has in excess of 190 subscribers. (Please click on the link and follow the instructions to join the list.)
Work on Geographies of Children, Youth and Families is flourishing, whether it be research, teaching or policy and practice. A Research Group of the RGS-IBG has been constituted in order to consider current and future research, teaching and practice in this field.
The Research Group has three main aims:
- To draw together the multiple, and now-often disparate, strands of research that deal with the geographies of children, young people and families, across and within disciplines.
- To provide a dedicated and much-needed forum for the vibrant and burgeoning community of new researchers and postgraduates in this field.
- To constitute a space for collaborations around and about new themes, emergent from the last five years of research in this area. These themes correspond to contemporary social issues beyond the confines of academe, and exceed, evade and cross-cut the traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries of Human Geography. The Working Group will help to forge new collaborations around some of the following empirical and theoretical issues relating to children, youth and families:
- Education: teaching, learning and schooling
- Health, fitness, diet, body image and well-being
- Work, consumption, money
- Mobilities and migration
- Growing up, the lifecourse and geographies of age
- Emotion and affect
- Childhood(s) past and future: memory, reveries, nostalgia, hope and desire
- Play, fun and leisure
- Culture: (sub)cultures, fads, crazes and panics
- Nature, environment and sustainability
- Safety, risk, protection and fear
- Gender and sexuality
- Social inclusions and exclusions
- War, unrest and terror(ism)
- Crime, violence and anti-social behaviour
- New technologies
- Participation and methodology
In order to facilitate debate about these diverse areas of research and teaching practice, the Research Group shall work towards the following objectives:
- To provide a forum for exploration and debate of new directions in the geographies of children, youth and families
- To provide a coherent link to research groups within other disciplines as well as RGS-IBG Research Groups
- To maximize the involvement of postgraduates and new researchers in all of the Research Group’s activities
- To work in an open and inclusive, seeking support and in-put from all those with an interest in this area
- To constitute a sustainable forum and support network that links research on the geographies of children, youth and families with the rapidly-growing range of practitioners and taught courses modules in the field.