Education and Childhood Network

Chairs:

• Johanna Sköld | Linköping University, Department of Child Studies, Sweden
• Friederike Kind-Kovacs | Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, TU Dresden, Germany
• Michèle Hoffman | Research Center "Historical and Comparative Childhood and Youth Studies" , University of Zürich,  Switzerland

The Education and Childhood network is invested in the study of all aspects of the history of education and the history of children and childhood. While the history of education and the history of childhood/children are often approached as separate scholarly entities, their historiographies overlap and their joint study can stimulate fruitful scholarly debates. The network particularly strives towards shifting the perspective to regions and countries that have been neglected or marginalised within the history of education and children/childhood. With our network we aim to connect scholars from different regions of the world and hope to encourage new contacts and networks. Within the ESSHC this network values interaction with other networks, such as gender, sexuality, politics, demography and family, culture, crime, economy, aiming to better embed the study of education and of children/childhood within the broader study of past events and processes.

For the next conference we encourage submissions for sessions and panels that elicit interdisciplinary approaches and debates. We particularly look for submissions that dare and offer novel approaches and critical re-evaluations of earlier research, of old and new sources, and of innovative theories and methodologies. This also leads us to look for papers or panels that cast light on topics and historical periods that have been largely neglected. We especially encourage contributions that critically approach and evaluate recent research debates and that tackle comparisons of societal challenges in past and present.

We encourage contributors to submit full panel proposals (of 3-4 papers) but we will also look favourably towards receiving single paper proposals, from which we will create full panels. Every submitted session needs to propose a chair and commentator. Based on our experiences with a considerable dropout rate we might compose panels with up to 6 papers. The varying number of papers in each panel urges contributors to adapt their presentation time to the number of papers in each panel. We encourage speakers to take advantage of the possibility to pre-circulate their papers and upload them to the homepage. For the panels themselves we encourage all speakers to rather actively engage with their audiences than to just read their papers. Commentators should concentrate their short and constructive comments on aspects that will encourage a lively interaction with the audience. Let us have some fun!