Fifth Biennial Conference
University of Sheffield, 1-3 July 2026
The fifth biennial conference of the Children's History Society will be held at the University of Sheffield from 1-3 July, 2026!
Our Call for Papers is now open:
The Children’s History Society, Fifth Biennial Conference
Call for Papers: Space, Place, Belonging and Identity in Intergenerational Histories of Childhood and Youth
The Diamond, The University of Sheffield, UK, 1-3 July 2026
The fifth biennial conference of The Children’s History Society seeks to examine histories of children and young people’s experiences of space, place, belonging and identity. Children and young people live in myriad forms of entanglement. At a local, relational level there is intragenerational entanglement with peers, with family and community, and with people encountered via institutions such as school, youth and leisure groups. There are interspecies encounters too with the materiality of location, weather and climate. However, there is also entanglement at a different scale, in which children and their local cultural contexts are impacted by their interactions with national and global ideas, practices and discourses - contemporary and historical. Ansell argues that in children and young people’s lives the local and the global “interpenetrate” (2009 p. 196) and that children:
‘Encounter near and distant places in multiple conscious and unconscious ways. While their most intense interactions may be with proximate spaces, the world they encounter is produced through diverse interactions and they constantly engage with things that connect with distant places - books, school curricula, fruit or clothes produced elsewhere’. (2009, p. 201).
Hence it is in the ebb and flow of the material, non-dialectic and non-hierarchical social spaces of childhood that connectedness to space and place emerge, rooted in, and feeding, claims to identity and belonging. As the geographer Yi-Fan Tuan states, “space becomes place as we come to know it better and endow it with value” (1977, p. 6). The meanings attached to space are thus socially produced and contribute to the construction of identity (Sleight, 2013, Lefebvre 1974/1991). An appreciation of identity as intersectional adds more layers of complexity, allowing us to examine how structural systems built around demarcations, including social class, gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, sexuality, and disability status, impact how children and young people come to occupy or be excluded from spaces, and to construct the values they come to associate with those spaces.
We invite panel contributions, papers and alternative forms of presentation from scholars (established and emerging, including ECRs and PGRs) working on histories of childhood and youth across ancient, medieval and modern history, and across disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, education, museology, law, geography and visual culture. We also encourage diversity in theoretical and methodological approaches, geographical scope, chronological period, and cultural/religious/spiritual backgrounds.
We especially encourage contributions from children and young people to showcase their work on children and young people in history. As such, we are particularly keen to hear from teachers and schools who wish to collaborate, and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) and community organisations involved in collaborative, participatory and engagement projects with children and young people.
The conference seeks to explore such questions as
● How can we understand children’s situated lives across time and space?
● How have children and young people in the past conceptualised space and place in relation to their lives, their pasts and their hopes for the future?
● How have children and young people's concepts of self, identity and belonging been shaped by space and place in the past?
● How have children and young people in the past been impacted by spatial dislocation in childhood, due to factors such as war, displacement and migration?
● How have intra- and intergenerational experiences of space and place in the past contributed to children and young people’s sense of belonging and identity formation?
● How have children and young people navigated intercultural encounters with space and place in the past? How does ‘space become place’ if you are told that you have no right to claim connection with it?
Possible themes for papers and panels include (but are not limited to)
● Children, young people and the production of space, place and belonging
● Children’s depictions of place and space, community and belonging
● Children and youth in public spaces
● Liminality and spaces for children/children’s spaces
● Demarcations between children’s spaces and adults’ spaces - virtual and social lines of division
● Theoretical approaches to understanding entanglement as a feature of children’s lived experiences of space and place
● Children and dangerous spaces
● Children and virtual/blended spaces/places - imagination, memory, literature, games and toys, digital worlds
● Belonging and generation
● Displacement, migration and memory
● Empire, mobility and children’s experience of space and place
● Transnational childhoods and education
● Emotional and sensory connections to space/place
● Children and spaces of spirituality and religion
● Children and interior spaces of the self
● Space and place in children’s literature
● Youth organisations and focal practices of childhood
● Social class and encounters with space and place - from the street child, to adventure playgrounds to the boarding school child
● Folkloristic perspectives on children and space/place
● Posthumanist perspectives on children and entanglement with the more-than-human (Barad, 2006)
Abstract Submission
The deadline for abstract submissions is 23:59 UCT 14 December 2025. Abstracts should identify the aims and key arguments that you will present and give an indication of the key sources and methods employed. You will also be asked to include a brief bio (50 words), and the name (s) and contact details of any co-authors.
Please choose the correct link for the type of submission you wish to make:
Individual Paper (20 minutes)
Click here to submit an abstract for an individual paper
The abstract can be up to a maximum of 2100 characters, which is approximately 300 words.
Themed Panel Presentation (3 x 20 minute papers or 4 x 15 minute papers)
Click here to submit an abstract for a themed panel
The abstract should state clearly the focus for the panel and must include a paragraph about each paper (with a minimum of 3 papers per panel).
The abstract can be a maximum of 5250 characters, which is approximately 750 words.
Alternative Format Presentation Abstract
Click here to submit an abstract for an alternative format presentation
The abstract should state clearly the focus for the session and must include details of the format and activities that will be included.
The abstract can be a maximum of 5250 characters, which is approximately 750 words.
Poster Presentation
Click here to submit an abstract for an e-poster
The abstract can be up to a maximum of 2100 characters, which is approximately 300 words.
If you have any queries, please email Dr Yinka Olusoga and Dr Julia Bishop at [email protected].
