Childhood Publics and the Child’s Gaze is a three-part seminar series dedicated to thinking about the various aspects of children’s photography. In each of the three seminars, different speakers address the archival, aesthetic, ethical, legal, and technical challenges and opportunities that children’s photography creates in research and practice.

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.

Childhood Publics and the Child’s Gaze is a three-part seminar series dedicated to thinking about the various aspects of children’s photography. In each of the three seminars, different speakers address the archival, aesthetic, ethical, legal, and technical challenges and opportunities that children’s photography creates in research and practice. 

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

Melissa Nolas

* 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.

Childhood Publics and the Child’s Gaze is a three-part seminar series dedicated to thinking about the various aspects of children’s photography. In each of the three seminars, different speakers address the archival, aesthetic, ethical, legal, and technical challenges and opportunities that children’s photography creates in research and practice. 

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

Liam Berriman 

Ioanna Noula

*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.

Welcome to the Connectors Study Podcast, a six-part series celebrating oral culture as a legitimate form of knowledge construction, explores various aspects of doing ethnographic research with children on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). Researchers, Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, and Vinnarasan Aruldoss, all based at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time of recording, recount their experiences doing ethnography with children, the historical contingency of the research, sampling, and team work.

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 researchers:

Melissa Nolas

Christos Varvantakis

Vinnarasan Aruldoss

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.

Welcome to the Connectors Study Podcast, a six-part series celebrating oral culture as a legitimate form of knowledge construction, explores various aspects of doing ethnographic research with children on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). Researchers, Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, and Vinnarasan Aruldoss, all based at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time of recording, recount their experiences doing ethnography with children, the historical contingency of the research, sampling, and team work.

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:

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas

Christos Varvantakis

Vinnarasan Aruldoss

Next time

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

Welcome to the Connectors Study Podcast, a six-part series celebrating oral culture as a legitimate form of knowledge construction, explores various aspects of doing ethnographic research with children on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). Researchers, Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, and Vinnarasan Aruldoss, all based at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time of recording, recount their experiences doing ethnography with children, the historical contingency of the research, sampling, and team work.

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 researchers:

Melissa Nolas

Christos Varvantakis

Vinnarasan Aruldoss

Next time

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

Welcome to the Connectors Study Podcast, a six-part series celebrating oral culture as a legitimate form of knowledge construction, explores various aspects of doing ethnographic research with children on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). Researchers, Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, and Vinnarasan Aruldoss, all based at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time of recording, recount their experiences doing ethnography with children, the historical contingency of the research, sampling, and team work.

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:

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas

Christos Varvantakis

Vinnarasan Aruldoss

Next time

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.

Welcome to the Connectors Study Podcast, a six-part series celebrating oral culture as a legitimate form of knowledge construction, explores various aspects of doing ethnographic research with children on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). Researchers, Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, and Vinnarasan Aruldoss, all based at Goldsmiths, University of London at the time of recording, recount their experiences doing ethnography with children, the historical contingency of the research, sampling, and team work.

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:

The researchers:

Melissa Nolas

Christos Varvantakis

Vinnarasan Aruldoss

Next time

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