Coordinators: Prof Ruth Leitch & Leeanne O'Hara

This SIG brings together a range of academics and researchers from different schools and disciplines to promote inter-disciplinary and cross-school collaboration in relation to research methods with children and young people.  The core aim of the network is to provide a platform for sharing good practice and for reflecting on some of the issues and questions that arise in research with children and young people.  Throughout the year, the network meets to discuss core methodological issues such as access, consent, ethics and power relationships and how these are dealt with within the disciplines in which they work.  Members’ research interests and expertise cover a wide range of methods aimed at prioritising the ‘voice’ of the child in the research process.  Members are actively involved in exploring and developing methodological approaches that illuminate the everyday worlds of childhood and are collectively exploring innovative ways of involving children and young people in research as well as working with them as peer researchers.  Group members have experience in working closely with academics, policy-makers and practitioners and dissemination of findings to a broad audience is central to their work.  Collectively, group members aim to build international collaborations for the comparative study of children and young people in order to inform policy and academic debates and to improve the lives of children and young people.