Close
IAS Book Launch: The Everyday Lives of Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Abuse
12 March 2026, 6:15 pm–8:15 pm
Join the IAS and the Critical Childhood Studies Centre in welcoming author Brenda Herbert (UCL Social Research Institute) for the launch of her new book.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Critical Childhood Studies Centre
Location
-
IAS Common GroundG11, ground floor, South WingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1H 0ALUnited Kingdom
The Everyday Lives of Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Abuse: Looking Beyond the Trauma Lens
By Brenda Herbert (Policy Press/Bristol University, February 2026)
Discussions on children who have experienced domestic abuse often focuses on trauma and risks, and little is known about their lives beyond abuse. This risks pathologising children and reinforcing colonial and patriarchal social norms. This groundbreaking book challenges dominant narratives by drawing on an 18-month multimodal ethnography with children in an inner London borough.
Offering a radical and holistic perspective on children’s personhood, this book situates their everyday lives within broader global debates on childhood, decolonisation and social justice. It engages with the works of Black feminist, decolonial and Indigenous scholars, calling for a fundamental rethinking of how we support and understand children who have experienced domestic abuse.
ABOUT THE EVENT
Brenda Herbert will give a brief introduction to her book. Kirrily Pells (Associate Professor, Social Research Institute, UCL) and Utsa Mukherjee (Senior Lecturer and Director of Research in the Department of Education, Brunel University of London) will offer perspectives on how the book relates to the study of the everyday, trauma, multimodal ethnography and wider debates on childhoods.
This event will be of interests to scholars and practitioners in the areas of critical childhood, sociology, anthropology, social work, psychology, education, international relations and social justice.
Open to all. Please register to attend: https://CCSC-everyday-lives.eventbrite.co.uk
This book launch is organised by the Critical Childhood Studies Centre. The Centre is a home for world-leading scholarship about childhood as a socio-political, cultural, and historical phenomenon in diverse global contexts. The Centre provides a focal point for faculty and students at all levels in UCL to engage in innovative and multi-disciplinary research, teaching, and public engagement geared towards achieving social justice with and for children and young people.
For more information, email us at critical.childhood@ucl.ac.uk or join our mailing list
About the Speakers
Brenda Herbert
British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow at Social Research Institute, UCL
Brenda Herbert (she/her) is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at UCL. She was the Sociological Review Fellow 2024/25. She is also a psychodynamic counsellor and has worked for over fifteen years with children who have experienced domestic abuse.
More about Brenda HerbertKirrily Pells
Associate Professor in Childhood at UCL Social Research Institute
My research, teaching and public engagement are in the field of critical childhood studies and my work concerns global childhoods and children's rights especially in relation to violence, memory, peace, and social justice. Across my research projects is a focus on creative arts, arts-based methods, and co-production. At UCL I am a member of the Critical Childhood Studies Research Group.
More about Kirrily PellsUtsa Mukherjee
Senior Lecturer in Education at Department of Education, Brunel University of London
Utsa's research interests broadly centre around the following axes: Children's everyday lives with a particular focus on generational order, parenting strategies, and children's agency; Intersection of race and class within parenting ideologies and family practices; Reproduction of social inequalities in the context of leisure; Critical race theory approaches to the study of childhood and parenting; South Asia and global South Asian diaspora; Critical sexuality studies.
More about Utsa Mukherjee