Jeannette is passionate about the role of education in the UK in promoting the rights of children as presented in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, especially with nursery and primary school pupils, and the benefits and limitations of existing approaches to rights education for young people. To this end, Jeannette has created a project entitled ‘Child Rights Week’ in conjunction with Midlands 3 Cities, the Children and Childhood Network of the University of Birmingham, UNICEF and Birmingham City Council, to promote the rights of the child within nursery settings in Birmingham. So far, these have concentrated on the ‘right to shelter’ and the ‘right to play.’ In 2019, the Child Rights Week project was awarded the AHRC/Midlands 4 Cities Cultural Engagement Award.
Jeannette has set up a Fieldwork Support Group for postgraduate research students at the University of Birmingham, funded by the School of Government and Society. The group was set up in response to numerous articles and studies about mental health and postgraduate research students in relation to returning from fieldwork, and the capability of university mental health services in providing counselling or similar therapies for experiences of this nature. In association with Stitched Voices, the group provides a safe space for researchers to share their fieldwork stories whilst engaging in a crafting activity, but also a way to turn their fieldwork experiences into a way of engaging in activism and change.
Jeannette is also the Postgraduate Research Director for the Children and Childhood Network (CCN) at the University of Birmingham, where she is planning the first ever CCN Conference on the theme ‘The Power of Play’ with other CCN postgraduate researchers. She is also an Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Human Rights, and a member of the Standing Group for Human Rights and Transitional Justice for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and a UNICEF Children's Champion.