Category Archives: Resources

Re-publication of Adventure in Play (1957)

unnamed-2Common Threads Publications is pleased to announce the launch of their ‘Playwork Classics’ series – unavailable and neglected historical texts written by the adventure playground pioneers and those involved in the development of playwork profession.

The first Playwork Classic, John Barron May’s Adventure in Play, is now available. Originally published in 1957, Adventure in Play is a report on one of the first experimental adventure playgrounds in the UK. Adventure in Play provides an engaging and sometimes challenging account of how the radical new concept of ‘adventure playground’ was first put into practice. In doing so it raises important questions about the development of today’s adventure playgrounds and the modern-day playwork profession which grew out of them.

Adventure in Play is essential reading for childhood historians, playwork students, sociology scholars and anybody interested in the development of play services for children from a historical perspective.

More information can be found here http://www.commonthreads.org.uk/?page_id=216 . To be kept up-to-date about forthcoming titles in the Playwork Classics series, please email us at info@commonthreads.org.uk.

The National Collection of Children’s Books, Ireland

Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to a new children’s books resource which may be of interest to you and your students: https://nccb.tcd.ie

The National Collection of Children’s Books (NCCB) is essentially an online platform, with a catalogue and database, that facilitates the exploration of over 250,000 children’s books in over 90 languages from five libraries in Dublin, Ireland. The project, funded by the Irish Research Council, began in December 2013 and ended in December 2015. NCCB was led by Dr Pádraic Whyte (School of English, Trinity College Dublin) and Dr Keith O’Sullivan (Church of Ireland College of Education).

The National Collection of Children’s Books (NCCB) was a two-year interdisciplinary and inter-institutional project (Church of Ireland College of Education and Trinity College Dublin) examining children’s books held in five libraries: Trinity College Library; Church of Ireland College of Education Library; Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street; the National Library of Ireland; and Cregan Library, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (DCU). It is hoped that the NCCB project is the first step towards a more comprehensive detailing of collections of children’s books in libraries throughout Ireland.

The NCCB website has two main functions:
A centralised catalogue of children’s books collections in the five aforementioned libraries, allows users to search for items across the five libraries. The main catalogue of records includes all titles in over 90 languages, including English, Irish, French, German, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Spanish, as well as other European languages. It is hoped that the project will contribute to the continuing development of the strong Irish profile in children’s literature research by providing a centralised online platform that will attract both national and international scholars and encourage new research in the area.
There is also an additional database section that highlights a significant number of texts of interest from these libraries and provides further detailed descriptions of, and images from, these texts. The additional database focuses on English-language texts of interest to the NCCB’s English literature scholars. However, it is hoped the database will encourage other language and literature scholars to explore the main catalogue and, if they so desire, develop the database further.

Further details can be found at https://nccb.tcd.ie/about

Wishing you all the best for 2016,
Keith O’Sullivan and Pádraic Whyte

The Role of Anthropology in Improving Services for Children and Families – SPECIAL ISSUE

Annals of Anthropological Practice
The Role of Anthropology in Improving Services for Children and Families
Table of Contents
The role of anthropology in improving services for children and families: An introduction
Cecilia Vindrola-Padros, Anne E. Pfister, and Ginger A. Johnson
Employing a multilevel approach to examine contraceptive service provision for youth in New York City
Hannah L. Helmy
War-affected children’s approach to resettlement: Implications for child and family services
Natasha Blanchet-Cohen and Myriam Denov
Policy doesn’t help us: Black feminist anthropology in the social work classroom
Riche J. Daniel Barnes
Deafness and sign language in a Yucatec Maya community: Emergent Ethnographic Practice
J. Paige MacDougall
Anthropology in the design of preventive behavioral health programs for children and families living in disadvantaged neighborhoods
Kathryn J. Azevedo and Thomas N. Robinson
A multilevel approach to knowledge sharing: Improving health services for families and children
Naheed Ahmed, Rupali J. Limaye, and Sarah V. Harlan
“You don’t take anything for granted”: The role of anthropology in improving services, policies, and parenting practices for adoptive families
Beatriz San Roman, Hugo Gaggiotti, and Diana Marre

Neos highlights—Teaching Race Awareness in Young Children

Are you feeling inspired by the AAA Meeting to bring new texts and tools into your classroom? As you plan next semester’s classes, consider Richard Zimmer’s argument to include one of the classics: Mary Ellen Goodman’s Race Awareness in Youth Children. Check out Zimmer’s tips on how to use this text to get your students thinking critically about their own racial biases in the October 2015 issue of Neos (pp. 11-12): http://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/current-issue/.

Interested in writing for the February 2016 issue of Neos? Email ACYIG.Editor@gmail.com this week with your submission (see http://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/neos-submission-guidelines/ for submission guidelines).

Neos highlights—Children in Transition

Are you struggling with how to represent the perspectives of vulnerable youth in your research and in your classrooms? Preety Gadhoke and Barrett Brenton share their strategies in “Children in Transition: Visual Methods for Capturing Impressions of Food Landscapes, Family, and Life among Homeless Youth,” in the October 2015 issue of Neos (pp. 8-9): http://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/current-issue/.

Send your reactions to this or other features of Neos to ACYIG.Editor@gmail.com for publication in our Letters to the Editor section of the next issue.

Neos highlights—Childhood & Migration

Are you looking for a quick and accessible read to get your students thinking about youth migration? Check out Jayne Howell’s column “‘There’s No Place Like Home?’ Rural Students’ Perspectives on Leaving Home to Study in Oaxaca, Mexico” in the October 2015 issue of Neos (pp. 6-7): http://acyig.americananthro.org/neos/current-issue/. Continue reading Neos highlights—Childhood & Migration

Youth Circulations Blog: “Beyond Trump: America’s Dairyland and Multiple Regimes of Mobility”

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce Youth Circulations latest blog by Dr. Julie Keller entitled “Beyond Trump: America’s Dairyland and Multiple Regimes of Mobility”  in which she argues “there is value in using Trump’s stumping as an entry point for understanding the powerful systems that regulate the movements of migrants…”

Warm regards,

Lauren Heidbrink and Michele Statz
Co-editors, www.youthcirculations.com

Exploring Childhood Studies in the Global South

The ‘Exploring Childhood Studies in the Global South’ project seeks to bring together researchers exploring childhood and children’s lives in diverse contexts in the Global South to engage in theory development using the various empirical studies that have been produced on Southern childhoods as a starting point for dialogue and action.

The central questions of this project are:  

  1. How, if at all, do theoretical concepts relating to childhood research in the North transfer to various social, cultural and political contexts in the Global South?
  2. What are the key theoretical priorities for child-focused researchers working in diverse contexts in the Global South and why?/What theoretical concepts do childhood researchers focusing on Southern childhoods find most useful and why?
  3. How can these theoretical priorities identified by child-focused researchers working on Southern childhoods be better reflected in dominant discourses within the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies?
  4. What challenges exist which may prevent the incorporation of theories developed by academics focusing on Southern childhoods into more dominant discourses relating to childhood studies?

These questions will be addressed through two initiatives in particular:

  1. The organisation of a three-day workshop in January 2016 for childhood academics and researchers with various levels of experience working within diverse Southern contexts including those based within institutions in the South.

    Dates: 19-21 January 2016
    Venue: The University of Sheffield

  2. The development of a website which will host the following:
    1. The Southern Childhoods Network which is a virtual network of childhood scholars, policy-makers and practitioners which seeks to facilitate dialogue, action and collaboration.
    2. An online database of childhood researchers and academics focusing on the Global South.
    3. A database of open access articles in English, French and Spanish with a particular focus on childhood and children’s lives in the Global South.
    4. Webinars facilitated by key academics in the area of global childhood studies.

      The website will be launched by the end of September 2015.

The project is managed by Dr. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh at the University of Sheffield, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth and funded by the British Academy Rising Star Scheme.