Thanks to funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland is developing a new Research Network on children’s human rights.

The Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland (www.ed.ac.uk/education/observatory) is a collaborative of Scottish organisations working to drive implementation of children’s human rights in Scotland, with local impact and global learning. While the Observatory hosts the Research Network and provides its steering committee, the Research Network is a partnership between Observatory members Childhood and Youth Studies Research Group (Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh) and Inspiring Children’s Futures (University of Strathclyde).

Why now?

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. The Research Network looks to further bridge the gap between research and practice and drive forward the collaborative research agenda needed to make children’s human rights a reality in Scotland.  

What for?

The Research Network will bring together high-quality research with the lived experiences of children and young people and with policy-makers, practitioners and organisations across Scotland. It will foster spaces to collectively engage with the complex challenges inherent in implementing children’s human rights and strengthen connections to address those challenges and capitalise on progress.

In practice, we will hold regular Research Network meetings (with the inaugural meeting taking place in late June 2023) to provide forums to connect research, researchers and children, young people and practitioners, as well as drawing in international experience and sharing learning globally. We will grapple with those complex challenges through nested programmes of meetings, briefings and working groups, led by members of the Network. We will share and inspire research across Scotland, including through collaborative research funding proposals and research partnerships.

We will maximise the impact of research on policy and practice through our deep existing connections with high-level groups and networks, both within the Scottish Government and more broadly across Scotland. The Network’s work will build on the many effective partnerships already marshalled across the nation to embed the Research Network in the Scottish landscape, ensuring that rigorous research evidence and expertise is available to support policy and practice decision-making as we move towards implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What next?

The Observatory is starting this exciting new project by mapping recent, ongoing and proposed research relevant to children’s human rights, that relates to Scotland. We encourage everyone to support our mapping exercise by filling in our form and sharing it widely with your networks: https://forms.office.com/e/wnL0KtxUDH. We are taking a wide approach to this mapping exercise so we can build a broad picture of ongoing research in Scotland, which means we are equally interested in hearing about less traditional research projects and grey literature work.

To keep up to date with our work and receive updates on the Network’s upcoming launch, sign up to the Research Network mailing list by emailing us at childrens.rights@ed.ac.uk and follow us on Twitter.

We very much look forward to working with Scotland’s research community on this important project!