Justice between generations

About the lecture

During the 20th Century, the words ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ alerted everyone to see that such behaviours are not natural, normal or necessary, as once widely assumed. Yet dangerous ‘adultism/adult-centrism’ still predominates. UCL’s departments still teach that children are inferior and need intense control and shaping by adults in families, nurseries and schools, neighbourhoods and nations. In neoliberal political economies, resources increasingly move from youngest to oldest generations: income, housing, holidays, freedoms, space, time. Natural and social resources once enjoyed by older people, from birds and butterflies, to free post-school education and certain civil rights, to safe communities, are disappearing. In some of the countries being most destroyed by war and climate chaos, around half the people are aged under-19 years.

Humanity’s social, political and biological survival depends on a great rebalancing of power and resources between generations, and on the creative imagination and energy of children and young people.

About the speaker

Priscilla Alderson is a Professor Emerita of Childhood Studies, and joined IOE in 1991. With colleagues, she has researched 40 projects and written over 300 publications on: children’s rights and agency; children as partners in medical and social care and research; children and ecology and genetics; anti-smacking; nurseries; rights in schools; disability and inclusion. Save the Children commissioned her to research international rights of children aged 0-8-years. The Ethics of Research with Children and Young People (Alderson and Morrow, 2020, 4th version) is the most used resource internationally on this topic. She also convened doctoral seminars on critical realism, 2014-2020, with ten sessions on YouTube.

About the chair

Rachel Rosen is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Critical Childhood Studies Centre based in UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies. Her research focuses on marginalised children and families. She examines the impact of dispossession and forced (im)mobility on childhood and explores intergenerational practices of sustenance, social reproduction, and solidarity in the face of neoliberal and racialised border regimes. Rachel is co-editor of Reimagining Childhood Studies (Bloomsbury, 2018) and co-author of Bordering Social Reproduction: Migrant mothers and children making lives in the shadows (Manchester University Press, 2025).