Inaugural “Children’s History” stream
Australian Historical Association conference
Deakin University
Geelong, VIC, Australia
29 June – 3 July 2020
The inaugural “Children’s History” stream will be launched at the 2020 Australian Historical
Association conference to be held at Deakin University in Geelong from 29 June to 3 July
2020. Despite some groundbreaking work being done by Australian scholars in the histories
of children and youth, for a long time we have lacked our own organisation. In the United
States the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY) was founded in 2001,
followed by the Children’s History Society (CHS) in the United Kingdom in 2015, both
contributing to the development of a flourishing international community of scholars. The
Asian-Australasian Regional Network (AARN) of SHCY was founded in 2017 and is developing
a network of scholars from this region or interested in the histories of children and youth in
this region.
To celebrate this development, we invite submissions of papers or panels for this historic
inaugural “Children’s History” stream, which we plan to run on Wednesday 1 July 2020
commencing with a plenary featuring:
- Prof. Shurlee Swain (Australian Catholic University) on the development of the
historiography of children and youth in Australia and its relevance to contemporary issues
and political inquiries
- Dr Simon Sleight (King’s College London) speaking about international trends in the history
of children and youth, drawing upon his experience co-founding the Children’s History
Society UK and his recent work on transnational/global histories of children and youth
- Prof. Barry Judd (University of Melbourne) and Assoc. Prof. Kat Ellinghaus (La Trobe
University) on the ethics and responsibilities of researching histories of Indigenous children
in Australia
AHA conference convenors welcome proposals for papers and panels on any geographical
area, time-period, or field of history, especially those relating to the theme of urgent
histories. When submitting your proposal, please indicate that you wish it to be considered
under the ‘Children’s History’ stream. Call for abstracts and proposals for panels, including
roundtables, will close on 29 February 2020. For further information see:
https://www.deakin.edu.au/aha2020
If you have further queries, please contact Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy at
carla.pascoeleahy@unimelb.edu.au.