About
The Child Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary initiative led by professor Els Dumortier, focused on developing research practices that involve children and young people as full-fledged citizens and co-researchers.
The Child Citizen Lab aims to be a center of expertise for co-creative, ethical, and inclusive research with children and young people. The Lab brings together researchers from various disciplines around a single shared goal: the development and implementation of ethical guidelines, methodologies, and best practices for research with—not about—children.
Children and young people are still too often excluded from full participation in research and policy, despite their direct involvement in today’s societal challenges. The Child Citizen Lab is founded on the conviction that children have a right to a voice and shared responsibility, including within the academic world.
The Child Citizen Lab aims to address this fundamental imbalance in knowledge production by systematically involving children and young people in formulating research questions, collecting data, and interpreting results. By recognizing them as active citizens, we create space for a science that is more responsive, representative, and socially relevant.
The Lab also aims to have a structural impact on the academic world: by providing a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, guidelines and models will be developed and applied to support researchers in ethically and effectively involving young people in their work.
Contact
Els Dumortier Els.Dumortier@vub.be
