Abstract
Acknowledgement
For over a year, Olga Nieuwenhuys has been signalling to the editorial team of Childhood that she is intending to step down. She finally made the decision in June 2013, having acted as co-editor since 2005, explaining that the time has come for her to try to do some of the writing that she has been planning to do, and for which daily tasks at the university never left enough time and energy.
We have all had the distinct pleasure of working with Olga. A renowned scholar in her own right, Olga’s editorial presence has shaped the direction of Childhood toward making the journal live up to its global mission and name. In doing so, she has brought her incisive and wide-ranging knowledge of social anthropological research about children and youth to bear, and facilitated publication of numerous papers that would not have seen the light of day without her encouragement, experience and wisdom.
Olga’s editorials have been hugely impressive in their theoretical reach, and, like her work generally, challenging in their implications. Speaking to topics and questions as diverse as childhood gifts, the ethics of children’s rights, Indian childhood, post-colonialism, and unforgettably, the topic of whether the Teddy Bear can speak, Olga has demonstrated the range and depth of her knowledge and, in so doing, the expanse of the field that continues to grow. We editors will all miss the excitement of seeing first drafts of these as they drop into our email inboxes for comment.
Thank you, Olga, for being such a good partner, always so ready to help and such an intellectual powerhouse on the team. We have all particularly appreciated the many excellent comments you have given us on our draft editorials over the past years. We promise to keep on asking, as you did in your 2010 editorial, Why childhood? Why children? And why global? And we wish you all the best for a happy and productive retirement.
Welcome
The Editors of Childhood are delighted to welcome Professor Karl Hanson as new co-editor of Childhood. Karl Hanson is Professor in Public Law at the Children’s Rights Unit, University Institute Kurt Bösch (IUKB) in Sion, Switzerland. He obtained his doctorate in law from Ghent University, Belgium, where he worked as a researcher at the Children’s Rights Centre and as a senior researcher at the Human Rights Centre. His research and publications are in the interdisciplinary field of children’s rights studies, an emerging research field to be situated at the intersection of human rights and childhood studies. He has worked on a number of themes, mostly from a socio-legal and interdisciplinary perspective, including the evolution of international children’s rights norms, practices and discourses, child labour and working children, juvenile justice, children and armed conflict and ombudspersons for children. He teaches at the IUKB in the Master interdisciplinaire en droits de l’enfant (MIDE; www.iukb.ch/mide). He is also the programme director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Children’s Rights (MCR; www.iukb.ch/mcr) and a member of the Directive Committee of the European Network of Masters in Children’s Rights (ENMCR; www.enmcr.net). Karl has been a member of the Editorial Board of Childhood for several years, and recently co-edited a special issue on children and international development. We are looking forward to working with you, Karl.