Though children have never been absent from international studies discourse, they are too often reduced to a few simplistic and unidimensional framings. This book seeks to recover children’s agency and to recognize the complex variety of childhoods and the global issues that affect them. Written by an international list of contributors from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australasia, chapters present highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time and space split into three broad sections: imagined childhoods, governed childhoods, and lived childhoods.


Through its analysis, the book demonstrates how international relations is, somewhat paradoxically, quite deeply invested in a particular rendering of childhood as, primarily, a time of innocence, vulnerability, and incapacity.

Contributions by: Patrícia Nabuco Martuscelli, Caitlin Mollica, Ana Alonso Soriano, Dustin Johnson, Anna Holzscheiter, Laura Pantzerhielm, Jonathan Josefsson, Vanessa Bramwell, Alebachew Kemisso, Jennifer Riggan, Lesley Pruitt, Antje Missbach, Robyn Linde, Sean Carter, Tara Woodyer, Lindsay Robinson, Timea Spitka, Kristina Hook, Iuliia Hoban, Bennett Collins, Ali Watson