8th Children's Rights Research Symposium hosted by UCC School of Law in association with CREAN.

16 Dec 2022

The 8th Children's Rights Research Symposium was hosted by the School of Law in association with CREAN on the 5th and 6th December. The theme of this year's event was 'Children's Rights in times of challenge/crisis'. 

An international PhD symposium was held at UCC in December 2022.  Featuring presentations from PhD students from across Europe and beyond, the event was a collaboration between the School of Law at UCC and CREAN (Children’s Rights European Academic Network) designed to further the development of doctoral research in children’s rights in a supportive environment.  Each doctoral student is paired with an experienced PhD supervisor and children’s rights scholar who provides dedicated feedback to them on their research. The students also have the opportunity to meet each other and learn from their shared experiences.

The Children's Rights Research Symposium is an annual event inviting doctoral candidates and supervisors from different universities and disciplines (law, sociology, education, anthropology, psychology, history, etc.) to come together to discuss, explore and develop research related to children's rights.  

Held over two days, the Symposium hosted panel discussions across the following topics: ‘Children’s Participation’, 'Children's Rights in Education', 'Roles and Responsibilities in Protecting Children from Violence', 'Youth Justice' and 'Children and Conflict'. Adjunct Professor Gerison Lansdown, School of Law, UCC, opened the event by delivering a key-note speech on 'Monitoring Children's Participation'.  

The Symposium had not been held since 2019 - since then, the world has faced a global pandemic, and research has shown that children were disproportionately affected by measures taken during this worldwide crisis. Moreover, children around the world continue to face numerous crises with devastating impacts on their rights, such as war and armed conflict, the climate crisis, increasing poverty, hunger and famine.  In these tumultuous times, children's rights research is more important than ever. 

This year's event focussed on the theme 'Children's Rights in the times of challenge/crisis', and provided an opportunity for doctoral students to present their research to their peers and academic supervisors working on children's rights, and to exchange and learn from each other. 

Please find programme here: Programme - 8th Children's Rights Research Symposium