The third and last seminar, ‘ethics and infrastructures for the child’s gaze’, features Scarlett Evans, Journalist and Manager for Contemporary Art, The Girl Museum, Gayatri Nair, Chennai Photo Biennale, Chennai, India, Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, University of Brighton, and Christos Varvantakis, Wikimedia Germany, and co-Director the Children’s Photography Archive. Building on the themes of the previous two seminars, the speakers engage with the role of archival infrastructure and the ethics of care in constructing the child photographer. Their discussion stages the possibilities that archives and museums might play in a future that takes the child photographer seriously. The third seminar was chaired by Elina Moraitopoulou.

To connect with the Children’s Photography Archive on social media, the CPA is on Instagram and Twitter @ChildPhotoArch 

You can also listen to the seminar recording on SoundCloud.

The speakers referred to several works during the session, including:

Scarlett Evans: 
– CUSP: at the edge of girlhood 
– DISplaced
– Female Gaze 

Gayatri Nair: 
– Chennai Photo Biennale – A Land of Stories photo exhibition. 

Annebella Pollen: 
– Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life, book by Annebella Pollen (2015)
– The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians, book by Annebella Pollen (2021)
– Nudism in a Cold Climate ; The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th Century Britain, book by Annebella Pollen 
– More Than A Snapshot: A Visual History of Photo Wallets, book by Annebella Pollen (2023)
– Make your Hobby Photography (Purnell Books, 1975), pp. 4-5. 
– Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography, book by Kim Beil (2020)

The Children’s Photography Archive (CPA):
– Collections – Children’s Photography Archive 
– Varvantakis, C., & Nolas, S.-M. (2020). Children as photographers. In Daniel Thomas Cook (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. SAGE Publications.
– Varvantakis, C., & Nolas, S.-M. (2021). Picturing What Really Matters: How photo-story research makes the personal, visible. The Sociological Review Magazine. 
– Data protection by design and by default. (2023, May 19). ICO. 
– 5Rights | Age Appropriate Design Code. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2023.
– Nolas, S.-M. (2018, July 18). Photo/stories from the field: Anonymous portraits and other practices in the ethics of representation. Childhood Publics Research Programme Blog. 
– Association of Canadian Archivists – Where are the Children? A Question of Care for the International Archival Community. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2023.
– IVSA Code of Research Ethics and Guidelines. (2023, March 31). International Visual Sociology Association. 

The seminar series is organized by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Brenda Herbert, Zoe Walshe (all Goldsmiths, University of London) and Elina Moraitopoulou (Hamburg University/Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and the Children’s Photography Archive. The events are part of the Sociological Review Seminar Series and have been funded by the Sociological Review Foundation.

The post Childhood Publics & the Child’s Gaze, Seminar 3: Ethics and Infrastructures for the Child’s Gaze appeared first on Childhood Publics.

The second seminar recording, ‘children returning the gaze’, features Wendy Luttrell, Professor of Urban Education and Sociology at the Graduate Centre, The City University of New York, Melissa Nolas, Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Anne Chahine, Research Associate, Research Institute for Sustainability, Potsdam. Having as a starting point the question of what happens when we put cameras in the hands of children, the three speakers engage with the ways in which the child’s gaze disrupts public images of children and childhood. They also discuss the ways in which the child’s gaze might help us think afresh about childhood and photography. The second seminar was chaired by Brenda Herbert.

To connect with the Children’s Photography Archive on social media, the CPA is on Instagram and Twitter @ChildPhotoArch

You can also listen to the seminar recording on SoundCloud.

The speakers referred to several works during the session, including:

Wendy Lutrell

• The video that Wendy plays at the beginning of her talk can be found here (for more content from Wendy’s research, see also https://www.childrenframingchildhoods.com/); Wendy Lutrell’s book Children Framing Childhoods: Working-Class Kids’ Visions of Care.
• Elliot Haspel’s book Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix it 
• In reference to Wendy’s post-covid provocation and the interdependence between children and adults, see Julie Spray’s article from 2023 Re-childing the COVID-19 pandemic; and what we lose from the un-childed public

Melissa Nolas

• The Connectors Study; see also the Connectors Study collection hosted in the Children’s Photography Archive
• Marcus Banks’ Visual Methods in Social Research
• Donna Harraway’s Staying with the trouble
• Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography, by Christos Varvantakis and Melissa Nolas (2019) 
• Ariella Azoulay’s The Civil Contract of Photography
• Ben Highmore’s THE GREAT INDOORS: At home in the modern British house
• EU Kids Online 2020 survey
• Picturing What Really Matters: How photo-story research makes the personal, visible
• RE-VISIONING WOMEN AND SOCIAL CHANGE:: Where Are the Children?, by Barrie Thorne
• Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition
• Infinity Kisses I (Cluny), 1981-87, color photocopies on archival paper, 65 panels of 140 photographs by the artist

• Anne Chahine
• Shawn Wilson’s Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods
• Establishing epistemic partnerships through letter-writing: Upcoming article: “It’s a bit like saying: I don’t see colour” – Unpacking Coloniality in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) through Epistolary Collaborative Practice, by Laura Lennert Jensen and Anne Chahine
• Collaborative exhibition-making: Co-Creating Pluriversal Worlds: Reflections On The Virtual Exhibition Decolonial Movements in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), by Laura Lennert Jensen, Vivi Vold, and Anne Chahine
• Future Memory Stories
• Roadmap to decolonial Arctic research  

* W. E. B. Du Bois’ and the Idea of Double Consciousness; ‘Been’, ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ children, by Karl Hanson; Embracing the past:  Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s 2019 Annual Lecture on Decolonizing Methodologies hosted by the Sociological Review were also works mentioned in the panel discussion.

The seminar series is organized by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Brenda Herbert, Zoe Walshe (all Goldsmiths, University of London) and Elina Moraitopoulou (Hamburg University/Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and the Children’s Photography Archive. The events are part of the Sociological Review Seminar Series and have been funded by the Sociological Review Foundation.

The post Childhood Publics & the Child’s Gaze, Seminar 2: Children Returning the Gaze appeared first on Childhood Publics.

The first seminar recording, ‘gazing at childhood in the public sphere’, features Melissa Benn, author and journalist, Liam Berriman, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at the University of Sussex, and Ioanna Noula, Research Manager at the Internet Commission and visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. They discuss the journalistic practices of representing children and children’s issues, digital practices of putting children’s photographs online, and the regulatory context in which these different practices happen. They also talk about the infrastructures and affordances that give rise to public visualizations of the child. The first seminar was chaired by Zoe Walshe. 

To connect with the Children’s Photography Archive on social media, the CPA is on Instagram and Twitter @ChildPhotoArch

You can also listen to the seminar recording on SoundCloud.

The speakers referred to several works during the session, including:

Melissa Benn

• Her essay Continuous Excursions: Thoughts on Writing about Children and the Community.
• Photographers John Berger and Jean Mohr and journalist Joan Didion; also, women photographers Jo Spence and Sally Mann.    
• Charles Booth, Henry Mayhew, and much more recently, Nick Davie’s work DARK HEART: THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT HIDDEN BRITAIN (1998).
• The Death of Alan Kurdi; Child with breathing apparatus; a Financial Times’ feature on toxic masculinity and how young boys respond to it with photographs by Laura Pannack. 
• Craig Easton’s photographs of the Williams family in Blackpool, and the exhibition bedrooms of London exhibition about which you can read more here.

Liam Berriman 

• Articles: How Photos of Your Kids Are Powering Surveillance Technology, by Kashmir Hill and Aaron Krolik; France aims to protect kids from parents oversharing pics online, by Laura Kayali.
• David Beer’s book The Data Gaze Capitalism, Power and Perception.
• Photography and surveillance: Barnardo’s examples; stock image example; Black teen kicked out of skating rink due to facial recognition misidentification; Facial recognition cameras arrive in UK school canteens. 
• Holloway and Valentine’s work Spatiality and The New Social Studies of Childhood.
• Photography and documentation: “Tangible as Tissue”: Arnold Gesell, Infant Behavior, and Film Analysis by Scott Curtis and The Vanishing Art of the Family Photo Album by Tim Clark.
• Datafied visual documentation: MOSAIC Educator and Family Apps and The Baby time-lapse trend by Vanessa Barford. 

Ioanna Noula

• General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment.
• THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM: THE FIGHT FOR A HUMAN FUTURE AT THE NEW FRONTIER OF POWER by Shoshana Zuboff.
• The Molly Russell case.
• The trouble with Roblox, the video game empire built on child labour, by Simon Parkin.
• The Age Appropriate Design Code; Safety by Design; The Digital Services Act.

*Jon Haidt’s work was also mentioned in the panel discussion.

The seminar series is organized by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Brenda Herbert, Zoe Walshe (all Goldsmiths, University of London) and Elina Moraitopoulou (Hamburg University/Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and the Children’s Photography Archive. The events are part of the Sociological Review Seminar Series and have been funded by the Sociological Review Foundation.

The post Childhood Publics & the Child’s Gaze, Seminar 1: Gazing at Childhood in the Public Sphere appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join Melissa, Christos, and Vinnarasan as they review the process of working together as a research team across large distances over an extended period of time. The team had to tackle a number of challenges and work together asynchronously, using technology and subverting the typical image of ‘lone ethnographers’.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The four month planning process in Brighton.
• Managing a collaborative workflow across the three cities.
• How the use of technology and the internet helped the research project and the team members.
• The value of meetings and the wealth of ideas and content that came out of them, especially outside of institutional spaces and normal working hours.
• How the process of moving in and out of synchronisation worked during the international research.
• Why the image many have of a ‘lone ethnographer’ is inaccurate.

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

This concludes the our series of podcasts on the Connectors Study. We hope you gained valuable insights into our research process, and what it means to undertake modern ethnography studies. Thank you for listening.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 6: Working Ethnographically as a Geographically Distributed Team appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join Melissa, Christos, and Vinnarasan as they take us through a ‘day in the life’ during their research in each of their respective cities. From time management to learning a new language, each location brought its own set of challenges.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Vinnarasan takes us through his process of learning Telugu, a new language for him, spoken in Hyderabad and across Andhra Pradesh, immersing himself in local life and current affairs, and the challenge of coordinating a large group of participants.
• Christos outlines how he balanced field work and interviews with the need to record data and create field notes each week, as well as making connections with the children and fighting the exhaustion that comes from long visits and and a continuous research cycle over an extended period of time.
• Melissa describes the difficulty of managing time with a large number of competing tasks on any given day, and her role as an ‘administrator’ for the 50 families she was working with.
• The commitments each researcher had as well as their research work, and the little things that tend to be forgotten or omitted when people talk about ‘the life of a researcher’.

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

Next time
In the final episode of the series our researchers discuss the process of coordinating and collaborating on such a large scale project that took place in such wildly different locations around the world.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 5: A Day in the Life of an Ethnographer appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join Melissa, Christos, and Vinnarasan as they outline their process for sampling children during their research. All three encountered unique challenges as they recruited families for a long-term project that required intimate access to the daily lives of its participants.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How the researchers found children to take part in the study.
• Determining how many families could be studied continuously at one time.
• How both Melissa and Christos dealt with finding families through means other than the school system.
• Vinnarasan talks about navigating a city and using a language he was unfamiliar with.
• Getting a wider sample of families by travelling across the cities and using professional networks.
• Why the age of the children wasn’t a major focus of the research.
• Retaining families during such a long research process.

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

Next time
During the next episode we will be looking at a day in the life of each of the three researchers.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 4: How We Went About Sampling appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join Melissa, Christos, and Vinnarasan as they explore the context in which the research took place. Each of the three cities were, and are, experiencing major political and social changes. In London it was the impact of Brexit, in Athens it was the election of a radical left party and the migrant crisis, and in Hyderabad it was the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. The global financial crisis lingers in the background of these discussions.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The changing socio-economic and political contexts of the children’s lives.
• How the families and children felt a sense of belonging in their home cities and countries.
• How do families discuss politics?
• Melissa discusses the impact of Brexit on families in London.
• Christos outlines the effect of the refugee influx into Greece and Athens on families there, as well as their participation solidarity efforts.
• Vinnarasan talks about the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
• Can a political climate create a ‘coming of age’ for children?

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

Next time
In the next episode the trio of researchers will be looking at how the sampling of children was done, and the challenges of finding families willing to take part in long-term research projects.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 3: The Historical Contingency of the Research and Our Responses to It appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join Melissa, Christos, and Vinnarasan as they discuss the rationale and execution of the study, the difficulties of making their methodology work, and how it has affected them as researchers and parents.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What it means to look at children as everyday actors in politics and public life.
• The perception of children’s roles in our society.
• The massive cooperation required by families taking part in the study.
• The new, messier methods required to make the data gathering possible and practical.
• What can be gained from looking at children’s everyday life, especially outwith institutions like schools.
• The process of developing relationships with families and where the line between friend and researcher lies.
• Dealing with uncertainty on a day to day basis when gathering data and conducting interviews.
• The new perspectives gained by the researchers and how it has affected them as parents.

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

Next time
In the next episode we will be looking at the historical contingency of the research and our researcher’s responses to it.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 2: Doing Ethnography in Three Cities, What We Learnt and How it Changed Us appeared first on Childhood Publics.

In this episode we join researchers Melissa and Christos, as they outline their reasons for starting a podcast, and what they hope to achieve by recording their conversations about their experiences in multi-modal ethnographic research.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Where the idea of the podcast came from.
• What the purpose of recording their conversations is.
• How increased informal discourse on researching can help fellow researchers.
• The need for more casual conversation and a sharing of experiences gained through field research.

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas
Melissa Nolas is an interdisciplinary social scientist, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Her research focuses on childhood publics and children’s relationships to public life; child, youth, and family welfare, well-being and social support; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and publics creating methodologies. She has published widely on these topics. She is the co-editor of the online journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Christos Varvantakis
Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.

Vinnarasan Aruldoss
Vinnarasan Aruldoss is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He obtained his PhD in Social Policy at The University of Edinburgh and prior to that worked several years with a number of civil society organisations, government departments and multilateral agencies as a social development practitioner in India. He is interested in inter-disciplinary research that contributes knowledge to the broader domains of childhood, early years provision and social policy analysis. He has published mainly in the fields of sociology of childhood, early years education, political sociology and childhood policy.

Next time
In the next episode we will be looking at the process of conducting research in three cities and what our researchers learned from their time in the field.

The post Connectors Study Podcast, Episode 1: Introduction to the Study and the Podcasts appeared first on Childhood Publics.