Have you undertaken insightful research on children’s relationships? Are you a postgraduate student and/or early on in your career as a researcher?  If so, the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (University of Edinburgh) would like to hear from you.

 We are looking for excellent research by early career researchers and/or postgraduate students, to present at our intensive seminar series “Exploring Children’s Relationships across Majority and Minority Worlds” (funded by the ESRC). We feel that there is much potential in cross-world dialogue, and plan for the seminar series to foster debate, challenge and dialogue across research done in Majority and Minority world  contexts. We believe this will add to theorising concepts of children and childhood, intimacy and relationships and contribute to interrogating children’s policy and services.

 At our first seminar, planned for April 30th 2010, we wish to examine peer relationships and are particularly looking for short ‘spotlight’ presentations on children’s friendships. We wish to have a presentation each from a Majority and Minority world context.

 If you were interested, please send us a 200 word abstract outlining your potential presentation. Please send it to l.marshall@ed.ac.uk and do so by January 25th 2010. For those accepted, we can pay for UK travel to, and accommodation before, the seminar. We will also support you towards publication, with particular opportunities to publish through Childhoods Today.

 If you would like to present at further seminars, current planning is:

.               Seminar Two – Intergenerational Relationships Oct/Nov 2010

.               Seminar Three – Youth Transitions to Adulthood Feb/March 2011

.               Seminar Four – Migration and family relationships Oct 2011

We would welcome abstracts for these seminars as well and will make further calls in the future. Contact l.marshall@ed.ac.uk to be put on the list.

 If you were more generally interested in the seminar series, we will be establishing a virtual network with other opportunities for presentations, communication and other seminars. Please contact l.marshall@ed.ac.uk to become part of this network.

 Further information on the seminar will shortly be available at www.crfr.ac.uk

 We use the terminology of Majority World (for the ‘Third World’) and Minority World (for the ‘First World’) to acknowledge that the ‘majority’ of population, poverty, land mass and lifestyles in the former, and thus to shift the balance of our world views that frequently privilege ‘western’ and ‘northern’ populations and issues (Punch 2003)

 Message posted by

Laura Marshall, Training & Events Administrator, The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) The University of Edinburgh, 23 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LN, Tel: 0131 651 3001, www.crfr.ac.uk