Professor Ruth Patrick (University of Glasgow) discussing the title: 'Working With Hope/lessness: child poverty and changing realities' with the Centre for Childhoods & Social Justice.
In this talk, Ruth will reflect on the participatory research she’s been involved in for almost six years, bringing together over 200 parents and carers on a low-income with researchers and child poverty action group. She will set out the foundational logics for working in a participatory way, but also the ways in which these principles rub up against broader institutional structures, and generate work that is routinely extremely gendered and emotionally intensive. Ruth will also set out the tensions but also the possibilities that come with engaging at the highest levels of Government - as changing realities did across 2024 and 2025 in the development of the Uk’s Child Poverty Strategy. She will link this to a theorisation of hope, which draws attention to the risks, challenges and potential in hope-labour.
Contact csj-centre@bristol.ac.uk to receive a calendar invite.