Annual Report 2009, Vienna

During the Vienna conference, six paper sessions and one symposium were organised. The symposium was co-organised with network 4, Inclusive education, on the theme “Diverse childhoods diverse rights? Twenty years with the UN Convention on the rights of the child”. One of the paper sessions was a joint session with network 17, Histories of education on the theme “Researching children’s rights: Aspects of time and place”. 

Altogether 22 papers and one poster were presented. Apart from the themes mentioned, the papers discussed issues related to “Children’s rights and policy issues”, ”Issues of methods and design in researching children´s rights”, “Children’s views on rights and life”, “Democracy, citizenship and partnership”, and “Educational contexts and experiences of life and learning”.  
The sessions were attended by between 10 and 40 persons  

A network meeting, attended by 10 persons, was held. During the meeting, future activities, including ideas for the next conference were discussed. We decided to turn to Network 21, the Postgraduate network and suggest a seminar on ethical issues in child research, organised by our network for the coming conference. Common publications and a need to approach other networks and other conferences to catch up on-going research and researchers dealing with issues of children’s rights were also brought up. We agreed upon that, taken together, this year’s presentations more explicitly focussed on child rights issues, formulated more critical approaches, and represented a broader diversity of perspectives in theory and methods  than earlier years.