Centre for Child-focused Anthropological Research

The aims of C-FAR are:

• To consolidate and build a comparative international approach to child-focused anthropological research.
• To make this approach applicable to varied settings including those where children are at risk from war, famine, dislocation, abuse, deprivation, physical and mental ill-health.
• To incorporate and address national and international policy and practices relating to issues such as child labour, education and social welfare, family life and children’s rights.
• To raise the profile of such research, disseminate its findings, and promote their contribution to understanding about how to change children’s lives in terms of locally relevant criteria.
• To inform national debate about issues pertaining to the nature of childhood in the 21stC.
  

The interests of the Centre are closely associated with the delivery of the M.Sc. in Cross Cultural Approaches to Childhood, Child Development and Youth. This degree is designed to show postgraduate students how anthropological approaches can be used to gain access to and understand children’s lived experience, their ideas about the world and themselves, and their relations with peers, adults, and the wider society.

The interests of the Centre are also closely linked with the M.Sc. in the Anthropology of Education. The first of its kind in the UK, this degree explores the relationship between education, learning and culture from an anthropological perspective. It focuses on issues concerning the transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge, in all its different forms. Postgraduates will examine how culture shapes and informs learning and educational processes and how, in turn, education impacts upon social and cultural practices.