Growing2gether: Early Years Mentoring Programme
Gavin Morgan reports on how Growing2gether’s Early Learning Centre (ELC) / Nursery Programme has supported more than 3,000 children and young people across Scotland.
12 November – “Why We Left Home”: Youth, Marriage and Inter-caste-religious Intimacies in Rural India
This talk focuses on inter-caste-religious marriages among young people in India, which have been generally interpreted through the lens of romantic love and individual choice. Disha K R seeks to complicate these narratives by situating such marriages within their specific regional context and its embedded social and structural practices.
24 November – Who Does What? The Gender of Ecological Living in a French Rural Area
In this presentation, Mathilde Krähenbühl explores the gendered implications of ecological and alternative modes of living. Drawing on family ethnographies conducted in a French rural area where climate-concerned individuals migrate, she attempts to understand how ecological living reshapes gender, domestic labour and parental care.
7 December – Book Talk – Queer Resistance: Contesting State, Family, and Inequality in Post-Socialist China
How do China’s LGBTQ+ people respond to intensified state repression? How do they construct community, identity, and nonnormative life trajectories amid persistent stigmatization? Drawing on ten years of research between 2015 and 2025, Susanne Choi explores how queer resistance emerges not only through activism, but also through intimate negotiations and daily practices.
LGBTQIAP+ Experiences of Expulsion: Reflections on Family, Violence, and Temporalities in the Brazilian Context
On 22 September, Jesser Ramos explored the redefinition of family among LGBTQIAP+ individuals estranged from their original families. Drawing from research in three Brazilian shelters, this talk addresses how these individuals reconstruct the notion of family within spaces of support, amidst past traumas and new communal connections.
The Digital Ghatak: How Algorithms Sanitise Caste in Matchmaking in Kolkata, India
Read Sucharita Sen on the role of digital technologies in the making of marriage.
Friendship resources
The Transforming Friendship Focused Support project has co-created a suite of resources to improve friendship support for care experienced young people and young adults.
Passing of Professor Angus Bancroft
We bear the very sad news that Professor Angus Bancroft an esteemed member of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh an early associate of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships died on Monday 20th July. When CRFR was set up in 2001 with a major research development grant from the then Scottish Higher […]
Navigating difficult family relationships in rural Mongolia
Veronica Gruca discusses the challenges of maintaining family ties in Mongolia in the face of complex relational dynamics.
Welcome to our new Co-Director, Dr Nicola Boydell
Welcome to our new Co-Director, Dr Nicola Boydell We are delighted to welcome Dr Nicola Boydell as a Co-Director of CRFR, who is joining as a lead for our Health, Illness and Wellbeing theme. Nicola is a Lecturer in Social Science and Public Health at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society and Usher Institute, University of […]
Relationships, communities and investment: what our recent CRFR blogs tell us
Over the past year, the CRFR blog has hosted contributions from researchers and third-sector partners working across youth work, policing, volunteering and family support. Each blog focuses on a different and unique issue. But as we reviewed the writings, it was striking to see that they all have a shared message about what helps young people, families and communities to thrive.
Congratulations to Associate Researcher, Becca Bland, on her PhD success!
Congratulations to Associate Researcher, Becca Bland, on her PhD success!
Rebuilding Trust – How Police and Young Marginalised People Can Shape Better Relationships
Alan Mackie explores one of the most pressing challenges for contemporary policing: how to repair and strengthen relationships between young people and the police in resource-deprived communities.
Small acts, big impact: how communities can support families through everyday challenges
Jean Lowe discusses how communities can support families through everyday challenges, and the reasons that can impact someone’s willingness to offer and/or receive a supportive action.
What Happens to Friendship When We Marry? Insights from Urban India
Himalika Mohanty discusses how marriage and anticipated motherhood reshape friendships among urban middle-class adults in India, particularly for women.
Beyond the Youth Worker: Why Families Are the Missing Link in Youth Work
Olivia Darby discusses their recent research on youth work and family engagement. The WONDER Foundation works in over 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America to empower women and girls to get the education they need to exit poverty for good.
Embedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary China
Book Talk with author Liu Jieyu for ‘Embedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary China’.
“Making Family” in Rural Mongolia: Insights from a failed marriage
An exploration the failed integration of a prospective wife into a herding family in rural Mongolia.
Afterlives of Retirement: Temporary migration, family and aging in the Gulf
Dr İdil Akıncı-Pérez explores how multigenerational migrant families in the Gulf are reimagining ageing, retirement, and long-term security in a region defined by temporary migration.
Book Forum: Janet Carsten’s Marriage and the Moral Imagination
Join us for a book forum on Janet Carsten’s Marriage and the Moral Imagination.
Muslim women’s entrepreneurial spaces as spaces of care and solidarity in Delhi, India
Entrepreneurship is commonly associated with productivity and performance, infrastructures, and more recently “start-up” culture. But what when entrepreneurship is grounded in informal, home-based, small-scale businesses driven not by capitalistic notions of profit making but instead by feminist notions of care and empathy?
Who Do You Think We Are?: The Seen and Unseen in Family History
Read Yoshinori Kasai on how we search for our roots, uncovering the records, memories, and hidden gaps that shape family histories in Japan and elsewhere.
Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families
Dr Cross will present her latest book, a ground-breaking study which challenges basic tenets of US social welfare policy with proof that raising Black children in two-parent families does not close racial gaps in life outcomes.
Childism, Children’s Rights and the Challenge of Children’s Empowerment
This public lecture, hosted by the Children and Young People Thematic Hub and partners, and featuring Distinguished Professor John Wall, is part of the Stewart Alan Robertson Lecture Series funded by the Robertson Endowment.
Making Research Matter: Policy Impact and Influence
This practical session is designed for postgraduate students and early career researchers working on families and social relationships.
Evidencing Relationships: Young, mobile UK-EU couples and the UK immigration regime
The UK operates one of the most restrictive systems worldwide for admitting foreign spouses and partners, requiring couples to satisfy a wide range of criteria over a prolonged period.