Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group

Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group is seeking session proposals for the 2012 RGS-IBG Conference. We seek sessions which speak strongly to the conference theme “Security of geography/geography of security”. Also sessions which use the conference exhibition space and seek to develop innovative ‘add-ons’ of one kind or another are welcome. Please note that sessions of more than two 1h4 40 slots (usually 4/5 papers or panel or other formats) are not being encouraged.

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.

Children’s geographies

The Research Group has three main aims:

1. 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.
2. To provide a dedicated and much-needed forum for the vibrant and burgeoning community of new researchers and postgraduates in this field.
3. 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
       

       Youth and Families Research Group

     • 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.