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In 2022, the Chilean literary award Premio Medalla Colibrí had a children's jury for the first time. This article has been written by four researchers, two adults and two children, who participated in this process and then studied the experience. We did interviews with different people involved and an analysis based on the notion of wonder. Here, we present some reflections on the criteria used by the children's jury and some findings that surprised us during the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationality has become central to Childhood Studies and even described as its ontological ground. Feminist theories offer articulate theorizing on relationalities, yet feminist ideas of relationality have not had a significant impact on Childhood Studies. Through focusing on feminist notions of corporeal specificity, sexual-temporal difference and asymmetry, and transcorporeality, this paper argues that feminist theorizations open up a space to engage with childhood and children's lives as not only relational or entangled, but as inevitably imbricated in relations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper bridges empirical research on children's political participation and theoretical debates on the concept of agency in Childhood studies. It takes insights from the internal criticism of the essentialist conception of agency in Childhood studies and develops it further. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with adolescent participants of anti-regime protests in two periods of recent Russian history—i.e., 2011–13 and 2017–20—it compares how these two cohorts of politically active children constructed their political agency. It suggests that the authoritarian and depoliticized context of Russian society affects the construction of agency by child activists in ways we do not see in Western democracies. It thus challenges the main concepts of agency in Childhood studies, including the "critical" ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My argument addresses a significant history of philosophical racism–a term borrowed from Mogobe Ramose. The argument is: philosophical racism makes the racist philosophically poor, too. I propose that two philosophical keystones, i.e., ontological simultaneity and mutual causation need to be further developed by engaging non-Western contributions. I conclude by emphasising that childhood studies could level the playing field by paying attention to the intersections of racism and adultism. In turn contribute to inseparable fields like the philosophy of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates journal influence of childhood studies journals in 2011–2019. Using CiteScore metrics, results show that childhood studies journals have gained influence over the past decade, suggesting that research in childhood has become more visible. However, certain journals flourish disproportionately within the network of childhood research. Overall, the findings demonstrate the rapid maturation of childhood studies as a discipline and the increasing relevance of journals in the process. Overall, the results serve as signposts for the direction of childhood studies and reminders to childhood scholars of their responsibility to maintain the integrity in childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent articles by Kim and Hammersley have critiqued, respectively: the methodological and normative assumptions that underlie research 'by' children; claims made about the implications of children's rights for the ethics of research with children; and more broadly, some of the central commitments of Childhood Studies. This paper offers a response to these critiques, seeking to distinguish between those that clearly should be accepted, those that appear to be based on a misreading of the claims being made by scholars and researchers, and those that represent serious challenges to defend, redefine or rethink our aims, claims or practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, the evolving field of childhood studies has contributed significantly to the theorisation of childhood and to research seeking to understand children's lives and experiences in different contexts. This article traces some of the key theoretical developments within childhood studies by means of a scoping study of peer-reviewed, scholarly journals and books published between 2010 and 2018. The aim of the review was to explore the theoretical and empirical contributions of childhood studies beyond its early foundational tenets. A number of emerging tensions were identified and these are explored in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws attention to the way some theoretically driven researchers discuss an insistent need for reframing the ontological and epistemological assumptions in the field of research known as childhood studies. Using a rhetorical approach, I will take a closer look at how their vocabulary is constructed and made credible through an attempt to find a cohesive language applicable in an interdisciplinary discourse. The article points to the paradoxical claim of taking a step away from a modernist way of thinking, while the arguing is based on a modernist approach. In addition, it also highlights constructions of a certain ideal researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a reassessment of a former study on French working-class children. The methods, based on interviews, and the theoretical postulates, where children were seen as informants on the social world, are submitted to a close examination in relation to the research context. Through this reflexive work, different narratives emerge associated with different scientific circles: French-written Bourdieusian sociology and English-written Childhood studies. It aims at provoking reflections on the differences of the two traditions in approaching children and childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates what are frequently taken to be central commitments of Childhood Studies: the idea that children are worthy of study ‘in their own right’, that childhood is a ‘social construction’, that children are and must be treated as active agents, and that participatory methods are the gold standard. It is argued that while these ideas have been fruitful in some respects, they involve fundamental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue of Childhood moves beyond stereotypical images of African children to document the complex ways in which contemporary realities and processes of social transformations shape and are shaped by children’s everyday lives. In this editorial, we bring together perspectives that are drawn from 10 articles that report findings from six countries: Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Uganda and Ghana. The insights generated reveal the importance of looking beyond the ‘deficit’ model of childhood to instead theorize how children, through their engagements in social, economic, cultural and political life, contribute to the reconfiguration of social and generational dynamics that unfolds in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that childhood studies has reached a crossroads in its development because of the growing diversity of the interests and agendas that are now being pursued under the interdisciplinary umbrella of childhood studies. As a consequence, fault-lines are beginning to emerge in what was once a unified project, reflecting tensions between key areas and theoretical positions. It goes on to outline a model for reconceptualizing childhood studies that weaves these different positions together, making them necessary and interdependent components of the same field rather than competing and potentially exclusionary perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores children's participation in research, from the perspectives of researchers who have conducted research with children. Researchers' reports, gained using an email interviewing method, suggest that children's participation rights are particularly compromised when the potential child participants are considered vulnerable and the topic of the research is regarded as sensitive. Such perceptions result in stringent gatekeeping procedures that prevent some children from participating in research. This article concludes that children should be viewed, not as vulnerable passive victims, but as social actors who can play a part in the decision to participate in research. Such a view would result in more careful attention to communicating effectively with children about research, and ensuring that they may have a more central role in decision-making about participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]