Conflict, Violence and Peace

This book broadens debates on violence, conflict and peace by examining the crucial role played by children and youth. Recent social, political and geographical research has demonstrated that children and youth are deeply impacted by war and violence and that, despite strong cultural assumptions about children’s needs for protection, their wellbeing continues to be an afterthought rather than a central concern of global politics. Children and youth have also been shown to be more than just passive victims of violence. They are multiply enrolled in conflict as well as in the politics of reconciliation and peace.

The handbook illustrates these complexities through a wide range of chapters that review key literatures on the topic from geographical perspectives and in diverse global contexts. Demonstrating the centrality of space for children and youth’s positioning within, and responses to, violence and conflict, the chapters engage with novel conceptual approaches and up-to-date empirical research to develop nuanced understandings of different forms of violence in relation to global and local topographies of power and young people’s subjectivities and agencies. While offering rich insights into context-specific dynamics, similarities and connections are also outlined between children and youth in the majority and minority world.

Christopher Harker received his PhD from University of British Columbia, Canada in 2009 and now works in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. His work examines the practice and politics of everyday life in the Occupied West Bank. His previous research examined the assembling of place through home-making, mobility and family. His current project, ‘Families and Cities’, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, explores how the recent and rapid growth of debt in Palestine have enabled and undermined contemporary forms of endurance in the city of Ramallah. His future research seeks to develop a broader account of the spatiality of debt through comparative research. As part of this process, he has recently launched the Financing Prosperity Network, in collaboration with the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL. He has published widely, including in the journals Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Environment and Planning A, Geoforum and Children’s Geographies. He is currently writing a monograph based on his most recent research, tentatively titled ‘Debt Space: obligations and endurance in Ramallah, Palestine’.

Kathrin Horschelmann is a Research Associate at the Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig (IfL), Germany, whose work focuses on post-socialist transformations, geographies of (in)security, critical geopolitics, the political and cultural geographies of children and youth, gender, transnational identities and social inequalities. Prior to taking up her position in Leipzig, she worked as a Senior Lecturer at the Universities of Durham (UK) and Plymouth (UK). She is currently conducting IfL-funded research on the ‘New Regional Geographies of (In)security in the Common House of Europe’, and coordinating a work-package-lead in the EU-Horizon2020 funded project “NATURVATION”, where her work focuses on participatory processes and governance trajectories for sustainable cities. She is further contributing to an EU-Horizon2020 funded project on “Spatial Justice and Territorial Inequalities in Europe” (IMAJINE) and supervising research in the Leibniz-Association funded Campus on “Eastern Europe as a Global Area”. Dr. Horschelmann’s publications include a co-authored monograph on “Children, Youth and the City” (Routledge), co-edited collections on “Contested Bodies of Childhood and Youth” (Palgrave), “Spaces of Masculinity” (Routledge), “Socialist and Postsocialist Mobilities. Societies on the Move” (Palgrave), “Public Spheres after Socialism” (Intellect) and numerous articles in international journals such as Political Geography, Geopolitics, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Environment and Planning A and Children’s Geographies. She is also currently writing a research-monography on “Children in War and Peace – Perspectives from the West” for Routledge and co-editing special issues on youth inclusion, young people’s landscapes of (in)security and security and peripherality for the journals Area, Social and Cultural Geography and Geopolitics.

Tracey Skelton was formerly a Professor in Critical Geographies, Loughborough University, UK, and currently teaches at the National University of Singapore. A prolific writer, and avid researcher, Skelton has written numerous papers in top journals and authored and edited several books. She is an active editorial board member of premium journals in Geography, such as Geoforum, Children’s Geographies, and ACME.