Childhood Team
Professor Pia Christensen
Professor of Anthropology and Childhood
She has extensive experience of conducting ethnographic research with children and young people in the family, at school, and in the local community. She has published widely on children’s understanding and agency in health, learning, risk, food, time and urban and rural space including methodological and ethical questions of doing research with children. Her main publications include Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices. (Falmer Press, 2000); (also published in Portuguese) Investigacão com Criancas: Perspectivas e Práticas.(Escola Superior de Educacão de Paula Frassinetti, 2005) and Children in the City: home, neighbourhood and community. (RoutledgeFalmer, 2002)
Professor Carol Aubrey
Professor of Early Childhood
Carol Aubrey is Professor of Early Childhood Studies in the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick. She trained first as a primary school teacher and then as an educational psychologist. Later, she spent a number of years in primary teacher education, first at University College Cardiff and then at the University of Durham where she was Director of Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) Primary and later Deputy Director of the school of Education. From 2001, she worked at Canterbury Christ church University where she led the Centre for International Studies in Early Childhood (CISEC) before moving to the University of Warwick where she is currently Director of Research and Academic Leader for the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL). Her research interests cover the policy-to-practice context to early childhood education and care, early learning and development, with a particular interest in early mathematics and inclusion/special education. Recent research has included early childhood leadership, particularly in multi-agency contexts. she is currently UK editor for Journal for Early childhood research, convener of British Educational Research Association (BERA) early childhood education and care Special Interest Group and a member of BERA Executive Council.
Christine Wilkie-Stibbs
Associate Professor of Children’s Literature and Childhood
She has a background in English Studies, specialising in children's literature and childhood, feminist/gender and psychoanalytical criticism. Christine is author of The Outside Child In and Out of the Book (
Michael Wyness
Associate Professor of Childhood
He was previously at the Universities of Northampton, Stirling and Edinburgh. His research interests are in the Sociologies of Childhood and Education. His most recent book is Childhood and Society: an Introduction to the Sociology of Childhood(2006) published by Palgrave. His previous books were Contesting Childhood (1999) and Schooling Welfare and Parental Responsibility(1995) both published by RoutledgeFalmer. He has just finished a project on children and young people's representation in civic and educational contexts. He has published widely on this theme in a number of journals. He is currently involved in a number of projects, including children's responsibilities and participation in the transition from primary to secondary school and the social processes of 'becoming a teenager'. He is book review editor for the journal Children and Society.
Professor Alan Prout
Professor of the Sociology of Childhood
Nick Lee
Associate Professor of Childhood
He has a background as a psychologist and as a sociologist. He has focused on childhood since his doctorate studies on police and social work cooperation in child protection investigations, completed in 1995. Since then, amongst other things, he has published the books Childhood and Society: growing up in an age of uncertainty (2001) and Childhood and Human Value: development, separation and separability (2005).
Dimitra Hartas, a chartered psychologist who has done research in the area of language and reading difficulties in children with dyslexia, has worked as a practitioner in the field and has published at national and international journals. Currently, she is an associate professor in Special Educational Needs at the Warwick Institute of Education. Her recent publications include Teacher and Speech and Language Collaboration: Being Equal and Achieving a Common Goal? (2004); A form of dyslexia? Pupils with language and reading difficulties (with Warner, 2000); Language and Communication Difficulties (2005; Continuum) and Dyslexia in Early Years(2005; Routledge).