About the research programme

The Childhood Publics research programme grew out of the ERC funded Connectors Study.  The programme, based in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, is a continued experiment in the theorisation of the relationship between childhood and public life (broadly defined), and in the practice of creative methods and multimodal ethnography with children. The programme is especially concerned with how circuits of social action in childhood are constituted through entanglements of social, cultural, material, affective and symbolic resources that cut across elements of space and time, private and public, personal and political, biography and history and which are used by children to influence their lives and their environments.

The Childhood Publics research programme is directed by Melissa Nolas, Reader in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Melissa’s research areas include:human agency and everyday life; childhood, youth and family lives; women’s health; social and economic change; civic and political practices across the life course; multimodal ethnography and creative research methods; archives and photography; publics creating methodologies. She was the Principal Investigator of two European Research Council grants (the Connectors Study and the Child Photo Archive project) and the co-editor of entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Researchers and doctoral students - past & present

Vinnarasan Aruldoss is an Assistant Professor in Social Wellbeing at United Arab Emirates University. He was a Research Fellow at Universities of Sussex and Goldsmiths, University of London on the ECR funded Connectors Study (2014-2019). His research interests are in childhood, social policy, early years intervention, social theories and sociology of education.

Brenda Herbert completed her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research was an 18-month multimodal ethnography with children who had experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention in an inner London borough, UK. Brenda is currently working as a counsellor with children and young people and is interested in researching the everyday lives of children who are marginalised in society.

Perpetua Kirby is a Lecturer at the University of Sussex and co-convenes a European Perspectives module on the BA in Childhood and Youth Studies. Before her doctorate, she researched children’s participation within different sectors, including education.

Robyn Long is a Senior Research and Evaluation Manager at the University of Sussex. She was a Research Assistant on the ERC funded Connectors Study at the University of Sussex and Goldsmiths, University of London (2014-2019). In her current role she leads the evaluation strategy and delivery for the University’s Access and Participation Plan. Prior to this she was Evaluation Team Lead for the NPCC’s Child-Centred Policing Portfolio for nearly four years.

Elina Moraitopoulou is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Anthropological Studies in Culture and History at the University of Hamburg. She is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow of the EU Horizon 2020 Participatory Memory Practices (POEM) project. Her PhD research was an ethnographic exploration of children and young people’s affective orientations to desired futures of education and their engagement with educational change. Elina is currently working as an educator and researcher in the field of environmental education and is interested in researching socially and environmentally just futures through education.

Pheroza Mottram is BA (Sons) History student at Goldsmiths, University of London. She specialises in London history and is passionate to learn about the different local communities living in Lewisham and the South East of the capital. She is an intern on the Childhood Publics Research Programme (2023-2024) working on the pilot research project ‘Hide and Seek: looking for children’s photography in family albums’.

Christos Varvantakis is an anthropologist with an interest in archives, political activism, the commons, and the cultural sector. He was a Research Fellow at Universities of Sussex and Goldsmiths, University of London on the ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019), and co-Investigator on the ERC Proof of Concept CHILD PHOTO ARCHIVE (2020-2021). He currently works as a Partner Manager at Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE).