Growing-up healthy in an adult-centred world
About this event
Enhancing children’s and young people’s health and wellbeing is a global priority. Yet, children and young people are often excluded from discussions about their own health and their perspectives silenced or marginalised by adult-led agendas and assumptions. By taking young people’s perspectives and experiences as the starting point, this inaugural lecture will offer a different way of understanding young people’s health.
Sharing insights from over 20 years of international research with children and young people, Grace will examine the ways in which dominant assumptions about childhood and youth shape children’s health and contribute to their disenfranchised position. In doing so, the talk will expose how adultism supports the everyday exclusion of children and young people and the resultant impacts on their well-being. Grace will challenge the orthodoxy that children and young people lack power to effect change in their lives – highlighting the importance of moving beyond tokenistic approaches to ‘empowerment’ in health promotion and towards the development of more positive understandings of children and their health that are grounded in their diverse perspectives, experiences and lives.
Join us for the talk from 6pm and a free drinks reception from 7pm.
This event will take place in person only.
About our speaker
Grace Spencer is a Professor of Children’s and Young People’s Health and Inclusion in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Social Care at Anglia Ruskin University. Grace has a background in nursing and public health and has worked internationally in a variety of countries including Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil. Her programme of research focuses on children’s and young people’s health and their health practices, with a particular emphasis on concepts of risk and empowerment. Her current research in Ghana and Australia explores the social and relational impacts of growing up with a long-term health condition.
Grace is recognised internationally for her expertise in the ethical aspects of conducting research with children and young people. Grace has held many international leadership roles, including expert advisory roles for UNICEF and the European Research Council, as well as Vice President of the Public Health Association Australia (New South Wales). Grace co-leads ARU’s Researching Childhood and Youth research group and is the Convenor for the British Sociological Association’s Youth Studies Group. She is a member of the African Child and Youth Migration Network.