Seminar Monday 17th June 2024:
Reconceptualising Resilience – An International Perspective
In this seminar, which will also be available to join online, Professor Lisa McDaid, Dr Laurel Johnson and Dr Stephanie Wyeth from The University of Queensland will discuss ways of operationalising and implementing resilience science. Drawing on evidence from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada, their work seeks to re-think resilience to improve child, youth, family, and community wellbeing within a bio-psycho-socioecological (BPSE) framework. The presentation will highlight emerging research and innovations including the need for placed-based community-led practice to support transitions towards more sustained community resilience.
Successful viva: congratulations to Thalia Assan
Congratulations to Thalia Assan for successfully passing her PhD viva with minor corrections: ‘The Politics of Friendship in the Lives of Black Girls and Girls of Colour in Scotland’. Thalia examines the politics of friendship in the lives of Black girls and girls of colour in Scotland. Her work explored the ways that friendship is affected by, contends with, and challenges structural inequalities and power relations.
NETREP Project Update
Have you thought about having (or not having) children or starting a family? This is the question we discussed with 55 participants interviewed in Scotland, Finland and Portugal in our ongoing research project.
Launch of Children and Society Special issue – Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism
We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new Children & Society special issue, ‘Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism’. Co-edited by colleagues at the Children and Young People Thematic Hub
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors, Fiona McQueen and Guanyu Jason Ran, who introduce themselves and provide information on their research interests.
Professorial Lecture by Professor Nancy Lombard
It is with great pleasure that we share a video of Professor Nancy Lombard’s Professorial Lecture at Glasgow Caledonian University. Titled ‘The Personal is Still Political’, Nancy, who is an Associate Director of CRFR, explores her career of violence against women research through the intersections of gender, class and age. It shows how, through the promotion of gender equality in society, we can help shape and transform approaches to stopping violence against women.
Gender in South Asia And Beyond
This collection of essays celebrates the scholarship of Professor Patricia Jeffery, Professor Emerita in Sociology, University of Edinburgh. For over 40 years, she carried out pioneering research, individually and in partnership with her colleagues on a range of subjects including gender and development, especially childbearing, women’s reproductive rights, social demography in South Asia, gender and communal politics, education and the reproduction of inequality; race and ethnicity.
Shruti Chaudhry: CRFR’s new director
Shruti Chaudhry is Chancellor’s Fellow in sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at Edinburgh sociology. Before arriving at Edinburgh, she worked in the field of gender and development in India.
Digital outreach/reaching out digitally: Online sharing in the face of emotional distress
Research Project Health Illness & Wellbeing Digital outreach/reaching out digitally: Online sharing in the face of emotional distress Part of the Scottish Government’s action on preventing stillbirths is to promote awa The web has opened up diverse possibilities for supporting people who are experiencing emotional distress, including those who are describing suicidal thoughts and behaviours. […]
AFFIRM
Research Project Health Illness & Wellbeing AFFIRM Part of the Scottish Government’s action on preventing stillbirths is to promote awareness of fetal movements amongst pregnant women. A new intervention called AFFIRM is combining new clinical guidelines with awareness raising, as a way of identifying women and fetuses who might be at risk of stillbirth. The […]
IMPACT
Research Project Gender and Sexuality IMPACT The IMPACT project aimed to promote sustained participation of children and young people in Equally Safe and promote the use of evidence from young survivors of gender-based violence. We believe Increasing Meaningful Participation will help us Achieve Change Together – adults, children and young people. Claire Houghton alongside 8 […]
Changing international policy on violence affecting children in partnership with UNICEF
Research Project Gender and Sexuality Changing international policy on violence affecting children in partnership with UNICEF Sarah Morton and Debi Fry have been awarded an ESRC Impact Grant to investigate how a large study funded by UNICEF has led to changes in policy in different countries, with a focus on Peru. A partnership between UoE […]
Boys and girls: Transitional constructions of gender-based violence
Research Project Gender and Sexuality Boys and girls: Transitional constructions of gender-based violence This research will be the first investigation into what young people, aged between 5 and 11, think about men’s violence against women. It will locate the construction and understanding of gendered violence in the childhood socialisation process bringing together social psychology, sociology […]
Seminar series on childhood sexual abuse
Research Project Gender and Sexuality Seminar series on childhood sexual abuse CRFR Associate Dr Sarah Nelson presents issues from research and practice, from her new book Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Radical Approaches*, which offer hope of more effective, imaginative means of protecting children and young people from sexual abuse.These seminars will be particularly useful for […]
Negotiating civilian and military lives – Reserves, families and work
Research Project Institutions and Civic Society Negotiating civilian and military lives: Reserves, families and work Recent policy developments within the United Kingdom (UK) have initiated significant reconfiguration of the Armed Forces. This move to a more flexible resourcing model known as the ‘Whole Force Concept’ will reduce the numbers of full time (Regular) personnel and […]
Digital epiphanies – work family configurations in a digital age
Research Project Institutions and Civic Society Digital epiphanies – work/family configurations in a digital age Digital Epiphanies is looking at the ways in which digital technologies are reshaping our work and family lives. Researchers will be working with 15 households in north-east Scotland, with at least one child under the age of 18. Researchers will […]
Personal networks of young adults in Switzerland: Social capital, educational and work aspirations
Research Project Institutions and Civic Society Personal networks of young adults in Switzerland: Social capital, educational and work aspirations This large project will survey a national cohort of young men, mostly aged 19, in 2020-21 who will participate in a compulsory information session on the Swiss military service. An additional sample of young women living […]
A new page: Libraries, austerity and the shifting boundaries of civil society
Research Project Institutions and Civic Society A new page: Libraries, austerity and the shifting boundaries of civil society A Leverhulme Trust project led by Dr Emma Davidson. This project focuses on public libraries and the things they do in, and for, the neighbourhoods in which they are based. Using case studies in Scotland and England, […]
Exploring Children’s Relationships across Majority and Minority Worlds
Research Project Theme: Childhood and Youth Exploring Children’s Relationships across Majority and Minority Worlds The seminar series brought together leading research on children’s relationships, to foster debate, challenge and dialogue across Majority and Minority world* contexts. It had a distinctly interdisciplinary agenda, bringing together theoretical developments and research in Childhood Studies with concepts of intimacy […]
Childhoods, networks and dispersed intimacies: a creative ethnography of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon
Research Project Theme: Childhood and Youth Childhoods, networks and dispersed intimacies: a creative ethnography of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon Lebanon currently hosts nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees, with 53% being children under 18. Because of the protracted nature of the war, childhood years are now lived almost entirely in the vulnerabilities of forced displacement, […]
Navigating Cultural Intimacies
How and why do friendships last across cultural differences? In this in-person talk on Weds 13 March 2024, Dr Shruti Chaudhry explores decades-long friendships amongst older adults of South-Asian heritage in Scotland.
Fatherhood and changing masculinities in China
Fatherhood and changing masculinities in China: a fireside chat, on Mon 26 Feb 2024, with Xiangxian Wang, Professor in Sociology at the University of Shandong. Xiangxian Wang will discuss social change in fathers’ involvement in parenting in China.
Co-operative childcare in Derg-era Ethiopia
The Centre for African Studies and CRFR welcome the anthropologist Dr Sarah Howard, Anthropologist and Researcher from Birkbeck, University of London for an in-person event on Weds 14th Feb. Dr Howard will share her research on Co-operative childcare in Derg-era Ethiopia.
Opportunities for connection and support around self-managed abortion
Abortion provision in the United Kingdom has undergone significant changes in recent years. 2018 saw permissions in Britain for home use of the second of two medications used in early medication abortion (EMA). And, in 2019, abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland.
Companionship and family-building in the complex planetary future
What might the future look like in terms of how family and intimate lives are composed? How do cultural expectations of childbearing collide with changing family forms and challenging environmental, social, and economic contexts, and what does this mean for traditional notions of ‘the family’?
Inequality & class divides in parental transfers to young adults in the US
Join Dr Ginevra Floridi to discuss inequality, social class gaps and parental support. Register for a free online event on Wed, 7 Jun 2023 12:00 – 13:00 BST
Webinar – Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill
At 2pm, by Zoom on Thursday 25th May, join Dr Frank Mugisha of Sexual Minorities Uganda for a webinar ‘Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill’. With Chair/Discussant Matthew Waites (Reader in Sociology, University of Glasgow).
Newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi
Our newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi share some information about themselves, their research interests and their plans for CRFR.
Launch of a new Research Network on children’s human rights
Scotland is making great strides in implementing children’s human rights and human rights more broadly. To maximise the impact of these ground-breaking changes, Scotland’s research community needs to be poised to critique, support and evaluate this implementation.
Academic bodies – a reflection on the experience of pregnancy during PhD studies
My pregnancy wasn’t planned.
I was in the middle of writing my MSc by research dissertation and I just asked – the universe, God, the small bundle of cells growing inside me – “please, let me have this. Please don’t betray me now, we came this far.”
How do we choose between destitution and exploitation?
When a man drove up to Mark in an expensive car and offered him work, Mark thought it sounded excellent. It was 2009 and he’d fallen on hard times. In fact, he was homeless. The man said he’d pay Mark £50 a day, give him food and somewhere to stay.
Young fathers as ‘experts by experience’ in father-inclusive practice
Join Professor Anna Tarrant to discuss young fathers as ‘experts by experience’, and their role promoting father-inclusive practice. An online event taking place on Mon, 27 March 2023, 12:00 – 13:00 BST
Collaboration, partnership working and finding unlikely allies – a lunch time seminar invite
The Binks Hub at the University of Edinburgh is hosting an online seminar on Collaboration, Partnership Working and Finding Unlikely Allies on Wednesday 8th March 2023, 12-1pm.
A space for quiet activism: A ‘public living room’ in an Edinburgh library
What comes to mind when you think of activism? People gluing themselves to a road? Or, shouting and chanting with banners outside parliament? Did you know there is a quieter, more hidden form of organised political action which fosters and mobilises relationships as a key lever of change?
The secret pathways of relationality: uncoupling beyond the couple
‘What a foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die’. So observes Olga, the protagonist in Elena Ferrante’s crushing novel The days of abandonment. Olga’s observations come from within the scene of her unravelling
Just the fault of religion?
Are some organisations more likely than others to sexually abuse children, due to their unique beliefs and behaviour? Or is it the risk factors they share with other, different organisations which enable abuse to continue unchecked?
Dis-connected lives? COVID-19’s impact on rural Scottish communities
Professor Philomena de Lima considers the many ways in which rural communities have been affected by the pandemic, while also offering some of her own insights of life in COVID-19 times from a Highlands and Islands perspective.…
How parents organised work and childcare during the pandemic
For the majority, the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation. It has affected every sphere of life including work, education, leisure, and childcare. Parents have been more likely than non-parents to be furloughed and to have reduced income. Indeed, more than 30% of parents reported reduced income in the first three months of the pandemic, although this ratio had decreased to 17% by December 2020.
The Legacy of Orkney for Child Protection
Thirty years ago on 27 February at 7 am, police and social workers took nine children from four family homes on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, under Place of Safety Orders. These cited group sexual activity, including “ritualistic music, dancing and dress”. The case, with its “dawn raids,” became a cause celebre – and remains so to this day.…
Looking to capture practices of intimacy in times of social distancing
In Japan, COVID-19-time has been marked by avoidance of “the 3 Cs“: closed spaces, crowds and close-contact situations. The term, selected late last year as the most popular new word of 2020, encapsulates governmental advice, recommended but not legally enforced.…
Impact of covid-19 on care home relatives – first findings
A team of researchers has been investigating the impact of covid-19 on families with relatives in care homes. The ‘impact of covid on care home relatives’ project is led by George Palattiyil Senior Lecturer of Social Work, School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and is funded by the Chief Scientist Office.
Children’s hearing system fails to address child sexual exploitation
Research by Barnardo’s Scotland and the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration considered 44 cases where child sexual exploitation (CSE) was referenced in reports (mostly by police or social work). They also considered 30 more cases where researchers identified the child as a very likely victim.…
Inclusion of parents and LGBTQ youth in teen dating violence research and prevention programs
In North America, teen dating violence among adolescents is a significant health concern. LGBTQ youth disproportionately experience bullying, peer aggression, suicide and peer harassment. In the United States, 1 in 9 adolescent women and 1 in 12 adolescent males have experienced a form of TDV…
South Asian child sexual abuse – what we need to know
The June report published by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) discusses how children and young people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities (BAME) can face additional barriers to disclosing and reporting child sexual abuse. I have been researching one such barrier for three years, investigating how concepts of Shame and Honour in South Asian communities can amplify…
A conversation: indigenous knowledges and intersectionality
The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships is holding its seminar, ‘Intersectionality Families and Relationships – Colonisation, Climate Change, Children’s Rights: Has Covid-19 changed the agenda?’ on the 11th and 12th of November 2020. In this short blog, two of our guest speakers Helen Moewaka Barnes and Ros Edwards, talk…