People
Associate Professor
Rutgers University-Camden (USA)
Sarada Balagopalan
Her work combines ethnographic and archival research to focus on the lives of disenfranchised populations of children in colonial and postcolonial India and draws on postcolonial and feminist theorisations. In addition to being the author of Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling Postcolonial India (2014) and numerous articles and book chapters, Balagopalan has also served as an associate editor for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies and currently serves as an editor of the journal, Childhood. Another volume that she recently co-edited is The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation (2023).
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Derby Fellow
University of Liverpool (UK)
Nicolás Brando
He is a Colombian philosopher and children's rights researcher conducting research in the areas of Ethics, Political and Moral Philosophy, working particularly on theories of justice, children's rights, vulnerability, and the capabilities approach. He is Co-Director of the European Children's Rights Unit (U. of Liverpool), and Secretary General for the Human Development and Capabilities Association. Prior to his current post, he was a Newton International Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. He has published widely on the capabilities approach, theories of childhood and children’s rights, education theory, and global justice. He recently published his first monograph, Childhood in Liberal Theory (2024, Oxford University Press/British Academy, in Open-Access).
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Full Professor
University of Geneva (Switzerland)
Karl Hanson
Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He obtained his doctorate in Law in 2004 from Ghent University, Belgium, where he worked at the Children’s Rights Centre and at the Human Rights Centre. His publications and main research interests are in the field of interdisciplinary children’s rights studies and include theorisations on children’s rights and childhood studies, working children and child labour norms and policies, international children’s rights law and juvenile justice. He teaches at the University of Geneva on the Master interdisciplinaire en droits de l’enfant (MIDE). He is also the Programme Director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Children's Rights (MCR). Karl Hanson is chair of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN) and co-editor of the journal, Childhood.
Associate Professor
University of Linköping (Sweden)
Jonathan Josefsson
His research focuses on young migrants' political activism, voting rights, age and democratisation and the political representation of children and youth in global politics. He is co-editor of The Politics of Children’s Rights and Representation (Palgrave, 2023) and author of articles such as ‘Age as yardstick for political citizenship: voting age and eligibility age in Sweden during the twentieth century’ (2022, with Bemgt Sandin), ‘Empowered Inclusion: Theorizing Global Justice for Children and Youth’ (2020, with John Wall), ‘Child Rights Governance: an introduction’ (2019, with Anna Holzscheiter and Bengt Sandin) and ‘“We Beg You, Let Them Stay”: Rights Claims of Asylum-Seeking Children as a Socio-Political Practice (2017)’. Jonathan is PI for the research projects: ‘Youth Representation in Global Politics: Climate, Migration and Health Governance Compared’ (2020-2023), ‘Pathways to Global Politics: Children Youth and the Making of Global Civil Society 1920-1992’ (2023-2025) and ‘Youth Climate and Environmental Mobilisation in Swedish Politics’ (2023-2026).
Full Professor
Universidad de San Martín (Argentina)
Valeria Llobet
Her interests are the micropolitics of childhood, childhood and gender rights and the politics of inequalities. Her current research project is entitled ‘Children, youth, and families: social transformation, care crisis and future(s) in the long-covid’. She has taught PhD and Masters courses and has organised conferences in several different countries in Latin America, the US and Europe. She has served twice as Chair of the Childhood Studies track of the Latin American Studies Association and is the current President of the RC53 Sociology of Childhood, International Sociological Association. Her latest publications are South American Childhoods, Studies in Childhood and Youth. Vergara, A, Nascimento, M.L. and Llobet, V. (eds.) Palgrave Macmillan, and Desde la Desjudicialización a la Refundación de los Derechos (Llobet, V. and Villalta C, eds.) Teseo, Buenos Aires.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Lund University (Sweden)
Therese Boje Mortensen
Therese Boje Mortensen is a postdoctoral researcher in Human Rights Studies, based at Lund University (Sweden) and with affiliations to BML Munjal University (India) and Antwerp University (Belgium). Her postdoctoral project (2025-2028), financed by the Swedish Research Council, applies critical child rights theory to a case study of rights-based climate activism and litigation in India. She is particularly interested in theorising children’s representation and participation from ethnographic, legal and philosophical perspectives. Some of her other research interests include ethnographic methods in human rights studies, civil society, human rights and climate change, activism and NGOs.
Professor of Childhood and Youth
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Lucia Rabello de Castro
She is the founder and Chair, from 1998 to 2011, and present Scientific Director, of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Exchange on Contemporary Childhood and Youth (NIPIAC/UFRJ/BRAZIL). Additionally, she is the co-founder and President Elect of the National Association of Youth Researchers (2017-2020) in Brazil and was the President-elect of RC53 (Sociology of Childhood) of the International Sociological Association (2018-2023). She is further the Chief Editor of DESIDADES, an electronic peer-reviewed scientific journal in the area of childhood and youth www.desidades.ufrj.br.
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Lecturer in Social Work
HO Ghent University (Belgium)
Didier Reynaert
His expertise lies in the field of social work theory, social justice, human rights and children's rights. A key focus in his research is the development of a human rights-based approach to social work. His research interests include the non-realisation of rights, accessibility of social services, child poverty, peer support and experts by experience, community care and child well-being. He mainly conducts qualitative ethnographic and participatory (action-) research with people living in vulnerable life conditions in which experiential knowledge is recognised as a third foundation of knowledge besides theoretical and practical knowledge. Didier Reynaert is also guest professor in Ethics in Education at Ghent University and guest lecturer Children’s Rights at Odisee University of Applied Sciences – both in Belgium. He is the co-founder and current chairperson of the Board of the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre and member of the Advisory Committee of the Flemish Children’s Rights Commissioner.
Assistant Professor
State University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Jana Tabak
She is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research explores the intersections of childhood, war, and militarization, with a focus on how these dynamics shape ideas of citizenship and the figure of the child-soldier. She is the author of The Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress (University of Georgia Press, 2020) and co-editor of Childhoods in Peace and Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, with J. Marshall Beier). Dr. Tabak has also co-edited special issues in Critical Studies on Security, Childhood, and Critical Military Studies. Her work appears in leading journals including Childhood, Global Responsibility to Protect, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and Contexto Internacional, as well as in major edited volumes on childhood and international relations, critical security studies, and the politics of violence and representation.
Associate Professor
University of Bristol (UK)
Afua Twum-Danso Imoh
Much of her work focuses on constructions of childhoods; children’s rights and social and cultural norms; parent-child relations; the impact of historical developments on constructions of childhood and child rearing practices; and problematising the binary between the Global North and the Global South as it relates to childhood studies. Much of this research has concentrated on Ghana and Nigeria. Her work has been published in a number of edited collections as well as in peer-reviewed journals. Afua is the lead co-editor of three edited collections and one of four editors of the new edition of the Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation (Routledge, 2023). She is a Series Editor for the Palgrave Childhood and Youth Series and serves on the editorial boards of the journals, Childhood, Children & Society, Third World Thematics and the Rutgers University Press Childhood Series.
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Senior Lecturer
Queen Mary's University - London (UK)
Hedi Viterbo
He is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Law at Queen Mary University of London and the founding director of the Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN). His research takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to challenge conventional thinking about childhood, law, human rights, and state violence. A central focus of his work is the role of legal and human rights discourses and practices in shaping childhood. Several of his publications reveal how international norms of child rights, often assumed to be protective, can actually harm marginalized and oppressed groups of all ages, including people in trouble with the law, refugees, colonized peoples, and activists.
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Professor
Rutgers University-Camden (USA)
John Wall
He is a theoretical ethicist whose work investigates poststructuralism, ethical theory, historical constructions of childhoods, children's rights, and children's suffrage. He particularly examines how children's lived experiences challenge and transform ethical, social, and political norms across societies. He is also co-director of the Childism Institute and the Children's Voting Colloquium.”