A conference at Brock University this week will bring together child and youth studies experts from across North America.

Conceptualizing Childhood and Youth is a three-day conference starting Thursday, Oct. 12 that will allow researchers, graduate students and community members to learn from each other and highlight some of the work being done in the transdisciplinary field.

The conference is expected to draw more than 100 people to Brock’s Sean O’Sullivan Lecture Hall. The event is hosted by the University’s Department of Child and Youth Studies and will include public lectures on topics such as childhood and play, life transitions for indigenous students, expressions of diverse youth in documentary film and the complex and challenging environment that today’s children stand to inherit.

“The connections being built by this conference stretch across research with, on and about young people from a variety of perspectives,” said Shauna Pomerantz, Graduate Program Director in Child and Youth Studies and a member of the conference planning committee.

Presenters from several departments at Brock will join colleagues from universities across Canada, the U.S. and Europe at the conference funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

In addition to the public talks, the conference features research paper sessions, networking opportunities and graduate student workshops on a wide array of topics.

“We have a large group of graduate students who have volunteered their time and energy at the conference, and many of them are presenting papers,” Pomerantz said. “We have a really special synergy between graduate students and faculty in our department, and the conference will help to deepen that connection and create conversations and debates that will continue long after the conference is over.”

Conceptualizing Childhood and Youth Public Talks:

Thursday, Oct. 12

• 9 a.m. — Brock President Gervan Fearon, Chancellor Shirley Cheechoo and department Chair Dawn Zinga welcome participants
• 9:30 a.m. —Dan Cook, Rutgers University, presents Play, Agency and Creativity and Other Complicities in Childhood Studies.

Friday, Oct. 13

• 9:30 a.m. — Suzanne Stewart, OISE/University of Toronto, presents Breaking the Colonial Mold: Indigenous Knowledges and Youth Life Transitions.
• 4:15 p.m. — Marnina Gonick, Mount St. Vincent University, presents Research at the Intersection of Art and Youth Ethnography.

Saturday, Oct. 14

• 9:30 a.m. — Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Western University, presents Learning to Inherit and Respond: New Dialogues in Early Childhood Studies

All of these presentations will be held in the Sean O’Sullivan Lecture Hall.