Inaugural Lecture of Professor Sophie Hadfield-Hill

What it means to be a Children's Geographer: people, projects, policy and place.

Professor Sophie Hadfield-Hill is a human geographer with expertise in children and young people’s everyday experiences of urban places. Sophie will use her Inaugural Lecture to showcase her international work with children, young people and families across diverse contexts and communities. She is a qualitative researcher, who has over the years worked with over 5,000 young people on a range of research projects related to children’s experience of their urban environments, their everyday politics, inclusion and citizenship. She is particularly well known for research and expertise on the social and spatial impacts of new urban development on young lives.

In exploring what it means to be a Children’s Geographer in a world where by 2050, it is estimated that 70% of the worlds children will be living in urban areas –  the lecture will draw on particular research encounters to highlight a range of intersecting vulnerabilities related to young lives.

Sophie will speak to themes of care, inequality and failure to ask critical questions of what is next for how we prioritise young people’s needs, values and experiences in the urban realm.

Biography

Professor Hadfield-Hill is an internationally recognised Children’s Geographer with expertise in children and young people’s everyday experiences of urban change in diverse contexts.  Her research portfolio spans young people’s lives in the UK, India and Brazil. She has led cutting-edge debates on public space, community mapping, participation, child-friendly cities; as well as theoretically engaging pieces on young people’s relationships with diverse natures and urban infrastructures.  She is a respected scholar in the field and has held the positions of the Chair of the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families research group (RGS-IBG) and an editorship position for the key journal Children’s Geography.

Sophie is committed to research which has an impact and has led work on influencing urban infrastructure for play and sanitation provision in India; influenced planning decisions related to young lives in the UK and shaped debate through expert contributions via her role on the UN-Habitat Global Expert Group for Sustainable Development Goal 11.3.2.