Events/Education
DATE: Wednesday 14th May 2014
TIME: 12.30pm – 2pm
VENUE: 20 College Green, Room 0G/005
REGISTRATION: This is an open and free event, but for numbers please RSVP to jan.speer@qub.ac.uk; sandwich lunch at 12.30pm.
SPEAKER: Dr Simon Hoffman, Swansea University
Wales has adopted a distinctive approach to children's rights, including creative use of devolved competence to incorporate the UNCRC into law and policy-making processes through the introduction of the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. Dr Simon Hoffman will explain how the Measure operates. He will discuss why Wales chose to adopt a particular legal mechanism to achieve incorporation having regard to the political, legal and judicial context. Dr Hoffman will reflect on some of the difficulties encountered in seeking to translate political will (i.e. to give effect to children's rights in Wales), into legal obligation, and will discuss the most significant issues for implementation that have arisen in the two years since the Measure was introduced.
Simon Hoffman began his career in 1985 working for NGOs as a rights advocate. After practicing at the Bar from 1997-2006 (civil law and public law) he joined Swansea University, College of Law, to teach human rights and children's rights, and to carry out research. His principal research interests are: implementation of human rights obligations through law and policy, especially at devolved or sub-state level; and, integration of rights into policy processes at local authority level. In 2012 he set up the Wales Observatory on Human Rights of Children and Young People (together with his fellow Co-director, Jane Williams). The Observatory engages directly with the Welsh Government, the public sector and the NGO sector to support child rights implementation in Wales, but also contributes to child rights based approaches to public policy internationally. Simon has been invited to present his research, and to speak about what is taking place in Wales on children's rights, at conferences in jurisdictions including France, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Argentina, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. He has acted as an expert witness to the Children and Young People Committee of the National Assembly for Wales, and has provided advice to the Wales Monitoring Group on the UNCRC, as well as to theChildren’s Commissioner for Wales.
DATE: Friday 20th June
TIME: 1230-2pm
VENUE: Senate Room QUB
REGISTRATION: This is an open and free event, but for numbers please RSVP to jan.speer@qub.ac.uk; sandwich lunch at 12.30pm.
SPEAKER: Emily Nelson, Eastern Institute of Technology, Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand
This seminar presents findings from Emily’s research ‘Is this student voice?’ Teachers and students re-negotiate power through governance partnerships in the classroom. The presentation highlights the slippery nature of enacting student/teacher classroom governance partnerships against a backdrop of elusive power dynamics and competing co-construction and accountability agendas. It promotes a power analytic frame developed for the research to examine the nuanced workings of power on possibilities for teacher and student pedagogical decision-making. It also explores implications from this examination for scaffolding student influence in decision-making within classrooms as a matter of social justice.
DATE: Tuesday 24th June
TIME: All day event, exact times TBA
VENUE: Great Hall, QUB
SPEAKERS: Professor Ferran Cassas, University Of Girona and Professor Helen Stalford, European Children's Rights Unit, University of Liverpool
REGISTRATION: This is an open and free event, to register place contact jan.speer@qub.ac.uk
Further information and programme to be announced.
DATE: Thursday 18th September 2014
TIME: 1230pm - 2pm
VENUE: 20 College Green/0G/005
REGISTRATION: This is a free and open event but for numbers please register with jan.speer@qub.ac.uk, sandwich lunch will be at 12.30pm
SPEAKER: Daniel Monk, Birkbeck University
Daniel Monk will present a paper on the experiences of a gay couple who were rejected as foster parents because they were in an open relationship. He will examine different understandings of child welfare and the limits to equality.