Department of Social Sciences Seminar Series 2020
All seminars are held on Wednesday afternoons between 3.30pm and 5pm in Creative Edge CE102/103. Queries can be addressed to the seminar programme co-ordinator, Tom Cockburn on [email protected].
The Health Needs of Adult Care Leavers in the UK
Dr Jim Goddard, University of Bradford
Wednesday 5 February 2020
3.30pm – 5pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103

Dr Jim Goddard, University of Bradford
In the past two decades the health of looked after children and younger care leavers in the United Kingdom – both mental and physical – has become an increasing focus of academic and government attention. Such attention has attempted to address widely-recognised deficits in the past health care of looked after children. However, the health issues facing adult care leavers of all ages have received little attention. In legislative, policy and research terms, the well-being of adults brought up in care as children largely disappears after the age of 25. This lacuna exists despite increasing evidence of the lifelong health consequences of childhood experiences of abuse and neglect; always the most common reasons why children enter care.
More information
Brief biography
‘He only knew before, the ceiling above him’: the transformative role of local Babas (grannies) in the de-institutionalisation of disabled children in Bulgaria.
Lindey Cookson, University of Sunderland
Wednesday 19 February 2020
3.30pm – 5pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103

Lindey Cookson, University of Sunderland
The practice of placing children without parental care in large institutions has a long history as a global phenomenon. Since the 1940s a continuous stream of research has highlighted the harmful effects of institutional life on children’s health and development. Babies, young children, and children with impairments are recognised as being particularly vulnerable to this type of care. Whilst other European countries have developed alternative care based around models of caregiving within ‘the family’, Bulgaria and other Central Eastern European countries have a history of much higher rates of children living in large scale institutional care and have been slower to develop de-institutionalisation strategies.
More information
Brief biography
The Dyslexia Friendly University
Professor Rod Nicholson, Edge Hill University
Wednesday 4 March 2020
3.30pm – 5pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103
Further details to be announced shortly.
Marginalised Youth Perspectives and Positive Uncertainty in Addis Ababa and Kathmandu
Vicky Johnson, University of Sussex
Wednesday 18 March 2020
3.30pm – 5pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103

Vicky Johnson, University of Sussex
Youth Uncertainty Rights (YOUR) World Research places youth perspectives as central to understanding how uncertainty features in their complex and precarious lives. Uncertainty is the defining concept in this comparative research that examines the lives of young women, men and youth who are gender fluid or of the third gender, as they grow up in insecure and changing cultural and political contexts. This project does not necessarily see uncertainty as negative. The research utilises the following theories: Johnson’s (2015) Change-scape that places youth identities, inclusion and ideas as central, and Bauman’s (2001) theories of the balance between security of family and community and youth seeking autonomy in a ‘liquid’ world. The teams in Ethiopia and Nepal work with marginalised and street connected young people to explore how they negotiate and navigate uncertainty in attempting pathways out of poverty as they shape their rights. The sometimes fearful feelings of not knowing the outcome of pressures from family and peers to migrate both internally and abroad, may be countered with a sense of expectation and excitement, as many youth, including those connected to the streets of Addis and Kathmandu as well as rural residents, otherwise face a situation of almost certain poverty.
Three dimensions of child power
Clara Rübner Jørgensen, University of Birmingham
Wednesday 1 April 2020
3.30pm – 5pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103

Clara Rübner Jørgensen, University of Birmingham
Changing conceptions of children and childhood have in the last three decades led to an increasing focus on children’s participation and their rights to have a voice in decisions of relevance to them. These changes have been manifested in policies, practices and within research, where participation and decision-making are often interpreted as leading to increased power for children. With a few exceptions, claims to increased child power, however, do not give much consideration to the complex and multi-dimensional character of power, described within the extensive theoretical power literature.
More information
Brief biography
Conservation, consumption and control: The production of energetic bodies
Heidi Bickis
Wednesday 29 April 2020
3:30pm – 5:00pm
Creative Edge, CE102/103
I examine how ideals of bodily energy circulate across three socio-cultural sites in which well-being and energy management are the focus: the NHS’s Live Well website; recent ad campaigns for the energy drink Red Bull; and the well-being consultancy firm, The Energy Project. I argue that these ideals both rely on and contribute to a bio-cultural imaginary in which bodies can avoid the disorder and disarray of tiredness and fatigue. In this imaginary, bodily energy is endlessly reproducible, measurable, and manageable. Embedded within these ideals is a ‘biomorality’ (Cederström and Spicer, 2015) that sets up a normative standard of individual well-being. Thus, a good embodied subject is one whose energy is well-managed and, therefore, plentiful.
Brief biography
Find out more about our Seminar Series in 2018/19 and 2019/20.