The Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) brings together research, scholarship and expertise in the arena of childhood and youth.
CIRCY is a pan-university research centre which involves members from the social and life sciences, arts, humanities and professional fields including social work, law, education and health. The centre is directed by Professor Rachel Thomson and co-directed by Dr Janet Boddy. In addition to its University of Sussex membership, CIRCY benefits from having an international advisory group which includes academics and policy and professional experts in the field of childhood and youth.
CIRCY provides an interdisciplinary space for dialogue, collaboration, creativity and capacity-building amongst CIRCY members, including student researchers. We are outward-looking and committed to working closely with external stakeholders including visiting researchers, service users, policy-makers and professionals in order to exchange knowledge and share expertise to promote good practice and inform developing policy and professional agendas. CIRCY aims to become an internationally recognised centre of excellence in the field of researching children, young people and families. As well as carrying out research and teaching, we host a regular programme of seminars, workshops and other events.
Our teaching and support for early-career researchers and professionals in childhood and youth spans undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses, as well as doctoral students working in the area of childhood, youth and family studies who play an active role within CIRCY.
Our work in research and innovation - and in teaching and knowledge exchange - shares three key defining features:
- Interdisciplinary
CIRCY members represent the best of the social and life sciences, arts, humanities and professions bringing together varied perspectives on childhood and youth - spanning, for example, economic work on childhood poverty and research on childhood and visual and digital cultures. Our interdisciplinary teaching and knowledge exchange includes seminars and events concerned with research methodology within the Doctoral Training Centre at Sussex, and linked to other activities including an ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Innovation Network led by Professor Rachel Thomson on Mapping new frontiers in qualitative longitudinal research. - International
CIRCY members work globally and, in both research and teaching, we are concerned with the interaction between global processes and local consequences. Our international research projects reflect the interdisciplinary diversity of the centre. Examples include research on European services for children and families, the children of aid workers and anthropological research on migration, and on children's labour and education. Connecting these diverse projects are underpinning conceptual concerns about children and young people's lives, as well as common methodological interests in international and cross-national comparative research. - In the real world
Nationally and internationally, CIRCY members work with real-world policy and professional concerns. These encompass research concerned with the everyday lives of children, young people and families, including studies of women's leisure and domestic lives; on 'modern adolescence' and research on youth culture, gender and sexuality from researchers in literature and cultural studies, history and sociology. CIRCY is also concerned with real-world problems, with challenging policy concerns and with the lives of children, young people and families in different circumstances. Examples include research on children's mental health, on marginalised youth and child welfare, and research on child, family and healthcare law. Nationally and internationally, we work closely with policy-makers, professionals and service users, advising central and local government and third sector organisations on policy, methodology and service development.