28 Sep 07

Pushalong toy from South Africa. Credit: Pitt Rivers Museum.

Oxford is hosting a major conference looking at the history of childhood and how this can inform modern debates about young people. ‘Investigating Childhood in the Past: Principles, Practice and Potential’ is being held at Magdalen College from 27-28 September.

The conference has brought together experts from across a range of disciplines from universities in the UK and abroad to consider this still under-studied aspect of human history. Discussion topics range from the role of children in the prehistoric Arctic and ‘child heroes’ in the Soviet Union, through to modern Third World streetchildren. The conference looks at themes such as the role of the child in public life, including ancient child sacrifice and children in bronze age burial rituals. The conference also looks at gender differences from ancient Greece to modern times.

This is the first annual conference of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past and is being hosted by the Oxford Centre for the History of Childhood, which was established in 2003. The Centre was the first body of its kind in the UK and was created to provide historical context to the changing public debate about the role of children and young people.

The conference is the culmination of five years of seminars organised by the Centre – ranging across themes such as children and violence, children and consumption, and adult-child relationships. These seminars brought together historians, social scientists and childcare professionals.

Professor Laurence Brockliss, Co-Director of the Centre, said: ‘Childhood has long been ignored by historians in part due to the shortage of materials, but also due to the assumptions that are often made about the lives of children. This conference will help to correct that imbalance and will also inform the public debate by providing historical context to modern ideas about the lives of children, for example about literacy or gender roles.’