UCC Futures - Children brings together University College Cork’s (UCC) longstanding tradition of pioneering research with and about children and our commitment to scholarship that has a meaningful impact on their lives. Through individuals across disciplines and research centres like the Irish Centre for Maternal & Child Health Research (INFANT), the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21) Children and Young People Research Cluster and the Centre for Children’s Rights and Family Law at the School of Law, this initiative unites the university's research excellence under one umbrella, UCC Futures - Children.

UCC Futures - Children’s mission is to establish UCC as a globally recognised leader in interdisciplinary research that has a meaningful impact on the lives of children. It embraces a wide-ranging research agenda, from child health to child justice, including the needs of vulnerable and marginalised children. The vision is to unite UCC's diverse and collaborative community of researchers, across all disciplines and career stages, around our commitment to innovative, child-centred research that addresses the most pressing social challenges affecting children’s lives.

The core values of this cluster revolve around recognising the centrality of children and their families in research about their lives, ensuring they are at the heart of the research process, as research advisors, participants and co-researchers. While ensuring the ethical participation of children and their families in the research process, we are committed to an ambitious research agenda, using leading research methodologies.

What sets UCC Futures - Children apart is its expansive reach across a wide range of disciplines right across the University from Medicine and Health, Social Sciences and Law, Arts and Humanities, Science Technology, and Engineering; the research covers all stages of child development incorporating pregnancy, infancy, early and middle childhood, right through to adolescence, with a view to understanding children’s lives now, while also delivering life-long positive impacts.

Furthermore, the initiative seeks to elevate the profile and impact of UCC's existing children’s research, foster further global research collaborations, and engage with the broader community to make a tangible difference to the lives of children. UCC Futures - Children will also develop innovative graduate programmes, attracting top scholars and students from around the world.

In summary, UCC Futures - Children is a pioneering and inclusive initiative with a clear vision to lead groundbreaking research efforts that will positively impact the lives of children, their families and the communities they belong to, both locally and globally. This endeavour seeks to shape the future of interdisciplinary research with and for children, dedicated to the fulfilment of their rights, their health and well-being and their life-long development.

The UCC Futures - Children video will be available shortly.