Sara Hammond contributes to 'Revisiting Contemporary Childhoods'

We are pleased to share that Sara Hammond has contributed to a book 'Revisiting Contemporary Childhoods'.

Through rich, interdisciplinary research spanning Australia, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, India and the UK, the book illuminates how children actively negotiate, resist and reshape the structures around them. It champions children’s agency as central to reimagining childhoods beyond western-dominated narratives, advocating for child-led theorisation and practice.

Offering a timely and critical examination of the tensions shaping children’s lives – across societies, systems and settings – the book challenges readers to rethink the dominant idealisations of childhood, pushing forward new conversations about childhood in the 21st century.

Sara wrote Chapter 6 which is headed  'The struggle facing children and professional in relation to child participation in public law Children Act proceedings'. Sara was asked to contribute to this important interdisciplinary book following her paper which was delivered at the Childhood Conference in 2022. 

Both her paper and this chapter draw on research findings from her doctorate thesis where she examined the different ways in which both children subject to proceedings and the professionals working in the public law Children Act proceedings system make sense of, understand and perform child participation.

 The book will be released for puchase on Thursday 30 April 2026, and will be available directly from the publishers, Bristol Policy Press and also via Amazon, Waterstones and other outlets.

29th Apr 2026

Dr Sara Hammond

Call 2009