Crossing the Narrow Bridge - a talk by Norman Gabriel

Faculty of Social Sciences

Crossing the Narrow Bridge - Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood

EBS.1.1 , University of Essex Colchester Campus

In this talk, I will introduce and discuss the multidisciplinary area of childhood studies that draws on a number of different disciplines within and across the social and natural sciences, including sociology, developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, language development, neuroscience, virtual reality and digital technologies, anthropology, geography, literature and politics. I will then provide an explanation of why the ‘bridge’ has proven to be so difficult to cross, pointing to some of the persistent barriers that prevent academics from different disciplines developing relational concepts to understand and explain the lives of children in contemporary societies. Finally, I will draw on some recent examples to illustrate my argument - firstly by exploring how researchers in childhood studies need to integrate some important concepts from psychoanalysis. Secondly, by discussing an innovative research project with colleagues that ‘bridges’ child psychotherapy with virtual reality, adopting a digital technology that can be used as a research tool to improve young children’s well-being.

Norman Gabriel is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies. He has written one of the first books in Early Childhood Studies, The Sociology of Early Childhood – Critical Perspectives (Sage, 2017), to examine young children’s lives from a relational sociological perspective. Inspired by the work of Norbert Elias, he is developing a distinctive, multi-disciplinary approach to childhood that is historical and comparative. He is currently editing a book ‘International Comparisons in Learning and Education: An Eliasian Perspective’ to be published by Macmillan later this year.

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Crossing the Narrow Bridge - a talk by Norman Gabriel

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Crossing the Narrow Bridge - a talk by Norman Gabriel

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