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CYPIRN (Children and Young People Interdisciplinary Research Network)

Co-Leads

Description

CYPIRN is a place for researchers, undergraduate students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, contract and full-time faculty, NGOs, and community organizations, including young people as co-researchers, to network, share ideas, pool resources, and collaborate on research and knowledge mobilization. We bring together scholars and members of the community who are actively engaged in research and scholarship with and pertaining to young people in Canada. The cluster supports conversations among members in informal and formal ways, including providing a platform for organizing events that invite national and international scholars and experts to share their knowledge and insights. The cluster also supports the development of future research and community projects, including aiding with external funding applications and organizing workshops or discussion groups related to qualitative research methods for working with children and young people. Additionally, we seek to collaborate on and directly inform policy initiatives relating to SDGs (https://sdgs.un.org/goals) and young people at York University and in the Canadian community. 

Current Members

Kate is a recent graduate with extensive experience in the arts and film industries in Canada and the US. In 2022, she earned an MA in Humanities from York University, completing an MRP titled “A Multistoried Artist: Holistic Self-Reflexivity in Childhood Studies,” which developed an analytical model using childhood art artifacts, autoethnographic tools, and research-creation.

In 2021, she completed “Youth Support Imaginings,” an arts-based research project with youth for York University’s Children, Childhood, and Youth Honours BA program. 

Kate is affiliated with the Robarts Centre’s Children and Young People Interdisciplinary Research Network (CYPIRN), where she engages in collaborative research to build knowledge with, for, and about diverse young people in Canada.

As an art therapy advocate, Kate is pursuing postgraduate studies in Art Therapy at the Toronto Art Therapy Institute, where she is exploring how creative and youth-centered approaches can support Black youth in reimagining therapeutic spaces that reflect their identities and lived experiences. A multiracial/multistoried woman, she is dedicated to amplifying diverse voices and knowledge keepers in creative arts therapies in Canada. Through her contributions to the Canadian Art Therapy Association’s Envisage column, Rooted Storytellers, she works toward inclusivity and representation in the histories shaping the field of art therapy.

Future Goals: Participatory research in art therapy to develop AR tools with and for children and youth. 

Research Interests: Art therapy, mental health, children and youth studies, arts-based methods, youth agency in research, intersectionality, technological equity, critical race theory.

Contact: kmoocurtis@gmail.com

Simran Arorais a PhD Student at the School of Social Work and a social worker in Toronto. Simran's research interests lie in youth mental health, evaluation, and knowledge translation (KT) activities. Simran is particularly interested in engaging with racialized youth with mental health concerns in Canada.

Contact: sarora03@yorku.ca

Julianna Kowlessar is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Science in Psychology, an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, summa cum laude, and an MA in Communication & Culture from York University. Her research explores the benefits of critical media literacy education in the Canadian context through innovative pedagogical methods, including games and other forms of media. Julianna’s master’s research inquired into how Ontario pre-service teachers understood and approached the subject of critical media literacy to discover practical and unique methods of teaching it to their future students. Through her doctoral research, Julianna intends to strategize policy recommendations for enhancing critical media literacy in the Canadian K-12 educational system. Julianna is also a doctoral fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) for the 2025-2026 year, where her research will examine the history of media literacy education initiatives across Canadian curricula to identify relevant gaps, exploring how critical media literacy efforts can be expanded nationally.

Contact: jkwlsr@yorku.ca

Affiliation: Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture, York University

Dr. Yana Berardini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Trent University, Durham. She is an academic member of the Centre of Excellence of Youth Engagement and the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence. She works closely with the Students Commission of Canada and Young Caregiver programs across Canada. Her research explores mental health and wellness of vulnerable, equity-seeking children and youth in Canada, and among them young caregivers. Her work examines youth’s mental health and wellness, by paying attention to positive psychological constructs such as youth engagement, youth leadership, safe spaces, mental health and wellness, and psychosocial development as well as advocacy and policy (e.g., awareness, identification, and support) related to caregiving. Yana is a mixed-method researcher who advocates for youth’s voice and positive youth development.

Contact: yanaberardini@trentu.ca

Cheryl Cowdy is the author of Canadian Suburban: Reimagining Space and Place in Postwar English-Canadian Fiction (MQUP 2022). Her work explores the psychogeographical, examining the relationship between spaces and subjectivity in English-Canadian suburban texts for adults and young people. Her current research investigates the discursive constructions of settler-colonial and Indigenous childhoods in historical Canadian children's print culture. She is dedicated to interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research in the Children, Childhood and Youth Program of the Department of Humanities at York University

Contact: ccowdy@yorku.ca

Dr. Madison Moore: Madison is an Assistant Professor in the Child and Youth Studies Department at Trent University, Durham and an Adjunct Professor in the Cultural Studies Department. Her research interests include child and youth culture, digital technology, child rights, and arts-based methods.

Contact: mamoore@trentu.ca

Ann Marie Murnaghan is an Associate Professor in the Children, Childhood, and Youth Program in the Department of Humanities at York University. Trained as a geographer, her historically focussed research has examined playgrounds and museums as sites of discourses about childhood, and what these spaces mean for children’s identities.  She recently completed an Insight Development Grant entitled Old poles and new stories: Archival knowledges and oral histories of C’idimsggin’is and Kurt Seligmann where her fieldwork took her to archives in Paris andSanta Fe, New Mexico. She is currently completing a book entitled Childism in Landscape and Policy.


Contact: amfm@yorku.ca

Kael Reid is an Assistant Professor in Children, Childhood, & Youth Studies in the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. They teach in the undergraduate program and also conduct arts-based research using an innovative, participatory research creation method they developed called, “collaborative ethnographic songwriting.” A robust method for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating research data through music, collaborative ethnographic songwriting supports equity-seeking people to compose, record, and document their stories in song. Using this method, Kael has worked on various research digital storytelling and research-informed theatre projects as well as with 2SLGBTQI+ individuals, youth, and families, breast cancer survivors, and newcomer and refugee youth.

Contact: kaelreid@yorku.ca

Dr. Janet Seow (she/her) is a Professor in the Faculty of Social and Community Services at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto. She has previously taught at York University and the University of Guelph-Humber.

Dr. Seow’s research explores participatory methodologies with children and youth; engagement with material culture; identity formation; and global cultures of childhood and youth. Her scholarly interests also include young adult, Indigenous, and Afrofuturism literature, as well as critical theory, intersectionality, and gender studies.

With over 20 years of experience in Child Welfare, Dr. Seow has worked directly with children and families in roles such as Child and Youth Worker, therapist, family coach, trainer, and supervisor. At Humber, she teaches a broad range of courses in childhood and youth studies, child and youth care practice, global childhoods, and research methodologies, across core, elective, experiential, and online formats.

Her publications include book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the Journal of Childhood Studies, and Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, and Cultures.

Email: janet.seow@humber.ca | xjrs2@outlook.com

Websites:

This presentation will explore the ways in which pre-university K-12 state schooling, structured by the broader structures and discourses of Canadian multiculturalism, seduces students into a post-racism view of Canada. Based on interviews with students, Dr. Howard discusses the ways that these multiculturalist, postracialist pedagogies shape student consciousness, and later dovetail with dominant university discourses to inform relationships among students at university. Black students are pressured to negate their embodied, familial, and community knowledges in order to get along with their non-Black peers, and non- Black students are set up to resent and reject their Black peers who tell their truth about the way they experience the world. The talk concludes by reiterating the importance of the kinds of education that take place beyond schools in Black families and communities to pre-empt and counter schooling’s postracialist seductions.

Dr. Philip S. S. Howard an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. His scholarship is in the areas of Black Studies, anticolonial studies and Critical Race Studies in education.  Dr. Howard’s scholarship examines the ways that relations of race and anti/blackness mediate how we come to know ourselves, make life, and create community in the Canadian settler-colonial context. His most recent research projects investigate contemporary blackface in Canada as a postracialist phenomenon, Black people’s agency in educational contexts in Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal, and school to university transitions for Black students in Canada.  His work is grounded in over 20 years of professional experience in K-12 education. Dr Howard’s publications include African Canadian Leadership: Continuity, Transition & Transformation, on which he is co-editor, and the forthcoming Performing Postracialism: Reflections on Antiblackness, Nation, and Education through Contemporary Blackface in Canada, both from the University of Toronto Press.

Presentation 1: Hamza Arsbi Studying Rural Education in Canada: The Opportunities and Challenges of Defining Rurality
PhD in Education, York University


Children attending K-12 schools in rural Northern Ontario travel further to access education and are less likely to have reliable services such as internet networks and experiential learning opportunities (Duhatschek, 2021; OSTA-AECO, 2022). The challenges faced by students in rural communities indicate that there might be missing components in current policies that are making them unreceptive to rural needs and hindering rural students‚ capacity to thrive (Jackson-Kelso, 2018). Despite the clear impacts of education inequity, K-12 policy issues in rural Ontario are rarely examined on their own, outside of their relationship to urban spaces, and the current body of knowledge is limited.

Through my research, I aim to contribute to redefining quality education in the context of K-12 education from the perspectives of rural communities and highlight any disparities between these definitions and existing education policies. Using a critical policy analysis framework, I will work with two communities in Northern Ontario and ask the following questions: 1) What does quality education mean for rural education in specific communities in Northern Ontario? 2) What contrasts might emerge between existing policies and the needs expressed by the communities when it comes to improving the quality of education?

Presentation 2: Teresa Humphrey Relational openings in the school yard PhD in Education, York University

My work-in-progress would contribute thoughts on how encounters with nonhuman presences with kindergarten children in school yard spaces can open pedagogical possibilities to address land relations and ecological precarity. Methods of visiting, artistic experimentation, and thinking with waters, are concerned with life forces living on within a school ground landscape, contextualizing what is often overlooked within dominant educational discourses.

Within an elementary school yard I ask, how might such an ordinary place be changed through acts of visiting‚ developing into practices of intimacy over time? I am proposing that these practices are artistic acts (Loveless, 2015), calling on children, educators and researchers‚ full bodies and senses to wonder collectively in situated contexts about multispecies storying that are always in tension with naturalized school ground place relations.

I approach research-creation as a practitioner, interested in how the arts intersect with curriculum pedagogically, as a medium bringing about situated questions of what are response-able relations here (Haraway, 2016). Following Stephanie Springgay (2022), I ask, “What grows and emerges within such a place?”(p. 21). I am curious of what might happen if following water‚ presence was part of school yard visiting, how water‚ materializations might call on us to think plurally (Chandler & Neimanis, 2013).

Presentation 3: Kate Moo King-Curtis Art and Words: Holistic Self-Reflexivity in Childhood Studies MA in Humanities graduate, York University External Associate, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies

Art and Words: Holistic Self-Reflexivity in Childhood Studies‚ offers a creative reflexive tool to better understand our positionality as researchers and practitioners engaged with young people and their culture. Using a) a feminist research perspective to understand the impact of our involvement with knowledge-building with or about young people, and b) a conceptual framework that allows for visual and lexical experimentation, the Holistic Self-Reflexivity model will offer an opportunity to discover and analyze internal and external factors that influence work in fields such as Childhood Studies. The model incorporates self-reflexive analytical tools and qualitative creative methods, such as autoethnography, childhood art artifacts, and artwork production, that integrate a multilingual approach to explore positionality.

Two questions are the focus of this study: a) On self-inquiry: How can we use art-making to deeply reflect on our life experiences to better understand our positionality in fields such as childhood studies? b) On the transfer of knowledge: How can art methods and self-reflexive practices help scholars and practitioners advance healthy youth-adult partnerships? Through autoethnographic art analysis and production, and by challenging the privileging of lexical language through the incorporation of visual language, I hope this model facilitates significant connections between lived experiences in diverse societies such as Canada, creativity, and theoretical concepts."

Presentation 4: Julianna Kowlessar Toronto Pre-service Teachers’ Understandings of Critical Media Literacy Education and the Potential of Student-Created, Remixed Board Games to Teach the Subject MA in Communication & Culture, Joint Graduate Program York University & Toronto Metropolitan University

Critical media literacy has become an increasingly important and relevant topic in communication and media studies due to its role in countering misinformation and disinformation (Kellner & Share, 2019; Cruz & Dorsch, 2019). The research I am currently conducting for my master’s thesis explores York University pre-service teachers‚ knowledge of critical media literacy and how they approach the subject and intend to teach it to future students, prospectively through remixed, student-created board games. The method I am employing includes one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with ten to fifteen undergraduate students in their final year of the Bachelor of Education (BEd) program.

In terms of critical media literacy education in Canada, Kellner and Share (2019) explain that although such education is compulsory, most new teachers are not receiving media literacy training in their pre-service programs (p. 62). Thus, there is great importance in training pre- service teachers to engage with critical media literacy for it to be effectively taught to prospective students in ways that are meaningful to their lived experiences (Butler, 2019; Cruz & Dorsch, 2019; Degand, 2020; Kellner & Share, 2019). Expected findings from my research based on preliminary interview data suggest that pre-service teachers in York University‚ BEd program would be open to teaching their future students about critical media literacy through remixed, student-created board games.

Presentation 5: Anna Lippman All I Need is One Mic: Utilizing hip-hop culture for community-based youth knowledge mobilization and activism PhD in Sociology, York University

My research seeks to understand how young people use hip-hop culture to understand and articulate their lived experiences and how do they use these experiences to change social institutions. This project will partner with a local youth serving organization to co-create and evaluate a 9-month social-justice oriented, arts-based research project for Black youth, which will focus on criminal justice related issues. Participants will self-select for this project through an application process. Participants must be: between 18-32, Black, currently or previously involved with criminal justice system, and an aspiring hip-hop artist. The program will be split into three phases. In the first phase, youth will research a legal issue they feel is impacting their community, in the second phase they will create a hip-hop based art project to share their research finding, and in the third phase they will present their findings to the community and local youth organizations. This project will use participant observation and semi-structured interviews to collect data. At the end of this project, youth services will gain an understanding of key legal issues impacting youth and accessible solution to these problems.

Presentation 6: Helen Liu International secondary school students in Canada: Exposing vulnerabilities and recognizing responsibilities PhD in Education, York University This paper offers insight on some of the challenges and ethical considerations involved in doing qualitative research with East-Asian international youth. The discussion is founded from a ongoing study that aimed to critically assess the experiences of secondary international students aged 16 to 18 in Canada to identify the gaps and vulnerabilities they encounter studying abroad.

Given the limited literature on international youth, this paper contributes new insights and highlights the specific challenges of gaining ethical approval, navigating non-uniform standards for individual agency, appropriate research design, gaining access, obtaining informed consent, and preserving privacy and confidentiality. Carried out against the backdrop of the unprecedented global pandemic, COVID-19, the research effort brings these challenges into uniquely sharp focus. Ultimately, this paper discusses the ethical considerations regarding the vulnerabilities of conducting research with international youth participants in relation to their legal and minor statuses, developmental capabilities, power disparities, methodological considerations, cultural differences in communication styles, gender, and language barriers.

Dr. Madison Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Trent Durham and an Adjunct professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Trent University (Peterborough). Her teaching and research focuses include young people and technology, youth culture, children’s rights, participation, child-centered and creative research methodologies, disability, and mental health.
Title: Exploring Parent’s Perceptions of Safety and Privacy in the Digital Experiences of Young People.

In 1989, a document entitled the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNCRC, 1989). This was the first internationally recognized document that declared children, identified as those under the age of eighteen, as rights-bearing citizens (OHCHR, 2023). While the initial document did not speak to digital spaces, in March 2021, the United Nations released a statement called General Comment No. 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment that specified that governments should uphold the rights outlined in the UNCRC within digital spaces. However, no research exists that analyses how General Comment No. 25 has been implemented in Canada or how adults understand young people’s digital rights. Given recent political and legal happenings associated with young people and social media, such as Ontario’s banning of cell phones in schools (Callan & D’Mello, 2024), it is critical to gain knowledge on how the perspectives and decisions of adults pertaining to digital spaces align with child rights. This presentation will speak about the perspectives of parents in Ontario with children of high school age about their child’s use of technology (including smartphones and computers). This project is especially interested in parents' understanding of safety (Article 3 and 19) and privacy (Article 16). This research explores the following questions: 1) How do parents of Ontario high school students understand safety and privacy in the digital experiences of young people? 2) According to parents, what role should parents/guardians, teachers, and the government play in supporting young people to navigate digital technologies safely? This presentation is based on an in-progress qualitative study, where Ontario parents are being interviewed on the above topic.

Jessica L. Campbell is a graduate student in the joint Communication and Culture program at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. She holds an Honours BA in Children, Childhood and Youth Studies from York University.
Title: From Escaping Reality to Enacting Brutality: How Youth Describe Their Play

This presentation aims to address the gap in the scholarship about youth play cultures by exploring the research question; What does ‘play’ mean to youth ages 16-18? Although childhood scholars widely accept the value of play, a review of the literature revealed gaps concerning youth perspectives on play. The current research predominantly examines play during the early years and reveals that adults and young people have different conceptualizations of play. The inclusion of youth’s viewpoints benefits the field of Children and Youth studies because they contribute valuable insights to enrich the existing scholarship about play. 

I took a qualitative youth-centered approach that co-constructed meaning with young people. This study employed a variety of methodologies which included semi-structured interviews, photovoice, drawing, and focus groups. During the focus groups the participants actively contributed to the data analysis to ensure the findings were from their perspectives.

The following themes emerged from the data: youth ‘play’ is about 1] Strengthening Relationships, 2] Escaping Reality, and 3] Enacting Playful Brutality. For the participants, talking with friends, communicating online, spending time with others and classroom activities Strengthened Relationships. The participants also revealed that entertainment, creative expression, and substance use are ways youth Escape Reality through play. Finally, the participants indicated that youth play is often about Enacting Playful Brutality through play fighting, virtual violence, and gritty sports.

Danielle Legerman is a first-year Masters of Education (MEd) student at York University and a recent graduate from the Children, Childhood and Youth (CCY) and Bachelor of Education (BEd) program at York University. As an emerging scholar, Danielle is eager to combine her passion for the dramatic arts and research with children and youth using child-centred, participatory, drama-based research methods.
Title: How children and youth participants interpret, explore and embody their understanding of children’s rights

Using a combination of child-centered, participatory and drama-based research methods, I delve into how children and youth participants interpret, explore and embody their understanding of children’s rights. My research is grounded in the idea that although Canada ratified The United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1991, promising to uphold the rights, protections and freedom of Canada’s children, they have failed to implement children’s rights education in Canadian and Ontario schools and curriculum. Indeed, Article 42 of the convention states that children must be informed, in appropriate ways, of their rights and how to exercise them, yet, Canada, and in particular, Ontario has not yet fulfilled this responsibility and duty.

My research aims to employ a combination of drama methods such as tableaux, puppetry, participatory workshops (Berman & MacNevin 2017; Horgan, 2017) short skits/role play (Horgan, 2017) and play-based activities that amplify the voices and experiences of my participants, pertaining to their rights, through child-centered approaches while empowering participants to partake in the research process in ways that are meaningful and enriching to them. Moreover, I strive to conduct research with as opposed to merely on children and youth participants (Berman & MacNevin, 2017) as I wish to position my participants are co-constructors of knowledge. Indeed, “Young people tend to be excluded from problem-solving activities related to their own affairs” (Cahill, 2006, p.63) especially in more ‘traditional’ research methods, per se, and therefore, I have intentionally selected to employ participatory methods to “…step beyond the colonial tradition in which the outsider (and ‘expert’) visits the site, defines the problem and provides the solution, thus positioning themselves as provider and the people as recipients” (Cahill, 1970, p.63). 

Eryn B. Berman, a final-semester Bachelor of Child and Youth Care student at Humber College, is passionate about creating inclusive spaces for children and youth with learning disabilities. Driven by her personal experience with ADHD and a learning disability, her research focuses on resilience, equity, and empowering students through supportive systems.
Title: How resilience helps students succeed

High school students with ADHD often face significant hurdles, from academic challenges to social and emotional struggles. My research looks at how resilience helps these students push through and succeed. Specifically, I’m exploring how things like personalized educational support, strong relationships with teachers, and self-advocacy can make a difference. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and Resilience Theory, I focus on the ways individual strengths and supportive environments—at home, in school, and within communities—come together to foster resilience. Using qualitative content analysis, I analyze various sources to uncover key themes like family support, school accommodations, and coping strategies. Ultimately, this research aims to promote equity-driven practices and inclusive policies that help neurodiverse students not just get by but truly thrive in their educational and personal lives.

Julianna Kowlessar is a PhD student in the joint Communication & Culture program at York and Toronto Metropolitan Universities. Her research centres on the benefits of teaching critical media literacy education in K-12 Canadian classrooms and using games as forms of pedagogy. 
Title: Diverse Avenues for Teaching Critical Media Literacy: Exploring the Significance of Spatiality in Educating Adolescents on the Subject

As adolescents continue to be exposed to media in their everyday lives, it becomes increasingly important for them to learn to navigate online spaces to support their personal and academic growth (Kellner & Share, 2019). At the master’s level, my research explored the potential of teaching critical media literacy to students through creative pedagogy, such as board games. However, through my doctoral research, I wish to examine the concept of spatiality and how spatial practices can influence adolescents’ learning about various subjects in educational settings.

Morse (1998) considers how commonplace spaces, which are part of our everyday lives, serve as a distraction, as they require our attention to be in several places at once. In many of the spaces we regularly find ourselves in, our attention is always supposed to be focused on the multiple facets related to that specific environment (Morse, 1998). By the same token, Ahmed (2006) discusses orientation and disorientation as necessary processes for growth that can transform the familiar into the strange and the strange into the familiar. Ahmed (2006) further contends that “Being lost is a way of inhabiting space by registering what is not familiar: being lost can in its turn become a familiar feeling” (p. 7). In the context of critical media literacy, I reflect on Ahmed’s (2006) work as a point of departure for students to embrace the beauty of uncertainty and explore new directions of learning that may be able to effectively support their individual learning styles.

As a former educator at Kumon Canada, I have considered how educational settings can be transformed into spaces where factors such as resiliency, outside-the-box thinking, creativity, fun, and patience are taken into account to promote optimal learning. Employing the works of Morse (1998) and Ahmed (2006), I believe that removing students from their comfort zones and reshaping educational spaces into ones rooted in the aspects of fun and play can have a greater, more positive impact on adolescents’ learning.

Lisa Smith is a former UK based K-12 educator, Lisa Smith holds a MEd from York and is a First-Year PhD student in the Humanities Department. She currently works as a TA in CCY 2999 ("Global Child & Youth Cultures”) and as a Research Assistant overseeing the digitization of the Edith Fowke collection of folklore materials at the Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, and a SSHRC funded project on language revitalization. 
Title: How can childlore improve the educational life of the child, and how can the archive be reshaped to better serve its community? 

Oral culture has value and should be used, perpetuated and established within public school pedagogical practice and through archival practice. In recent years, scholars have questioned the purposes and practices of the traditional archive (Bennett, 2018; Robinson, 2020, Sterne & De Luca, 2019). Constructed from live, spontaneous actions or a "performance" (Taylor, 2003), childlore is a cultural practice whose existence in the archive demands critical reassessment. Childlore's ephemeral nature sits uneasily with the “rationally ordered collections” (Bennett, 2018) and “the preponderance of writing in Western epistemologies” (Taylor, 2003) that archives often privilege. The embodied actions of childlore cannot truly be frozen in the archive and attempts to do so become (mimetic) representations rather than authentic. All of this makes childlore's place in the archive problematic and reveals both issues about archival practice and also the value of childlore within the archive and culture at large. 

Folklore’s cultural value, including childlore, was explored by York Professor and folklorist Edith Fowke who noted that "what ordinary people do is important" (Kirby, 1998), with archives attempting to capture this traditional knowledge. However, a discrepancy arises between archival presentation and folklore’s circulation in culture today, with measures required to reanimate childlore to make it accessible. Drawing on professional observation, archival research and a decolonial methodology, my research question is How can childlore improve the educational life of the child, and how can the archive be reshaped to better serve its community? Answering this question begins with archival research using the Edith Fowke collection. Next, Fowke’s work will form the basis for accessible community events to promote and support the sharing of personal childlore examples. Finally, I will examine how childlore can be placed in the Ontario elementary curriculum. Next steps include conducting further primary research and a visit to Fowke's collection at the University of Calgary.

Yana Berardini is Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Trent University. Her research explores the mental health and wellness of equity-seeking children and youth. 
Title: The experiences of young caregivers at post-secondary education: What it means to be a ‘student carer’.  

A hidden population of young people called “young carers” (YCs) or young caregivers, take on caregiving roles within the family due to multiple reasons (e.g., illness, disability, addiction) on top of being at school or work. Currently, very little attention is given to the needs of YCs across Canada, both in research and in practice; as a result, many of them go unnoticed, even though more than a million youth identify as a caregiver in Canada. There are certain costs associated with being a YC, and education is not an exception. In addition to a “caregiving penalty” attached to their social and psychological well-being, YCs are also less likely to finish post-secondary education and enter employment due to their caregiving obligations; many report difficulties with attendance and homework completion, which can impact overall performance. This points to the fact that YCs’ educational attainment might be at risk; dropping out of school or not advancing in further education is a reality among YCs. At Trent, a guiding principle is to ensure that all students get equitable and inclusive experiences in their academic trajectories. Therefore, understanding more about YCs’ experiences in education could promote innovative ways to support them at school. Specifically, by using a mixed-methods approach, this research will aim to shed a light on their experiences (positive and negative) of being a student while taking care of family member(s), examine what supports they might be using or wishing to have, and better understand the state of their overall mental health. Follow up interviews with interested YCs will dive deeper into what it means to be a caregiving student at a post-secondary, student-focused institution like Trent University. As this is a new project, awaiting ethics approval, the goal of this presentation would be to bring  awareness to the topic of YCs, highlight their educational experiences and mental health (published thus far and in previous years), and discuss some of the potential difficulties around accessing this hidden sample of children and youth, especially as we include two identification questions. 

Rahaf Alakbani and Esmaeel Abofakher are experienced program coordinators, artists, and researchers specializing in community-based initiatives for newcomer and refugee populations in Canada. With over a decade of experience in arts facilitation and community engagement, they have worked with organizations like Culturlink, the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture, MabelleArts, and ACCT. Their collaborative work focuses on using music and storytelling to support the well-being and integration of marginalized children and youth, blending artistic practice with research to drive social change.
Title: "Singing Our Stories": Collaborative Arts-Based Research with Refugee Children and Youth

Rahaf and Esmaeel are lead artists and program coordinators engaged in "Singing Our Stories," an innovative arts-based research project conducted in collaboration with York University. This initiative is designed to create a space for self-expression, healing, and empowerment for refugee children and youth, aged 10 to 18, through music-making, songwriting, and storytelling.

Central to this work is the integration of participatory and collaborative methods, allowing young participants to co-create songs that reflect their lived experiences, hopes, and cultural identities. 

The project is grounded in principles of equity, social justice, and decolonization, leveraging the transformative power of art to amplify marginalized voices. By combining qualitative research methods with artistic practice, the project investigates the impact of arts-based interventions on participants' emotional well-being, social connectedness, and sense of belonging in Canada.

Weekly sessions emphasize collective creativity, dialogue, and trust-building, culminating in performances that celebrate the diverse stories and resilience of newcomer communities. Our presentation will highlight the methodological approach of "Singing Our Stories," which

blends creative facilitation, participant observation, and reflective analysis. We will discuss the challenges and successes of working with vulnerable populations, including the importance of cultural sensitivity, the ethics of representation, and the need for flexible, participant-centered research practices. This work-in-progress demonstrates the potential of arts-based research to foster inclusive spaces for knowledge production and community engagement with refugee children and youth.

Are you conducting research with children and/or youth? Are you interested in learning more about research ethics with these populations? Our speakers bring a range of research experience to this panel and will be sharing some of their encounters with ethical issues and dilemmas in their research projects with young people. Join us online for thought-provoking presentations followed by an open discussion with the audience. 

Register here: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/cO67R4UNTY-StEGG1cDSMg

TBA.