[News] Reminder CfP RGS26 - Towards Just Futures: Negotiating Emotional Geographies of Safety and Place

[Anna Schliehe]

**with apologies for x-posting**

Dear colleagues,

please consider submitting an abstract for our session entitled ‘Towards Just Futures: Negotiating Emotional Geographies of Safety and Place' at this year’s RGS-IBG Annual Conference in London, scheduled for 1-4 Sep 2026. This session is sponsored by the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (GCYFRG). If you interested in joining the session, please send a short abstract (up to 250 words) along with your name, email address, and affiliation by 20th February 2026 to E.Haslam at newcastle.ac.uk and anna.schliehe at uni-bonn.de. Please contact us if you have any questions!

Many thanks and all the best,
Anna & Eleasha


Call for Papers
Towards Just Futures: Negotiating Emotional Geographies of Safety and Place

Session Organiser: 
Eleasha Haslam (Newcastle University, UK) 
Anna Schliehe (University of Bonn, Germany) 

Session Format: In Person, Paper Presentations.
Key Words: Children and Young People, Safety, Emotions, Justice, Space

Session Abstract:
For Children and Young People (CYP), justice is not only a legal or abstract concept, but an everyday, emotional and spatial experience; shaping how they move through space, relate to others, and imagine their futures. CYP are often overlooked as active participants in the making of justice (Blaisdell et al., 2021; Kraftl, 2013)). Instead, justice is often encountered through adult-designed systems, rules and institutions that regulate their bodies, emotions and possibilities. 

At a time when uncertainty, violence, displacement, conflict, and insecurity are intensifying, CYP’s contributions to geographical debates are overlooked by adult-centric discourses and narratives. Yet, CYP are increasingly expected to live with the consequences of injustice while having limited power to shape responses to it (Khan, 2021; Pain et al., 2010). Within these conditions, justice is deeply entangled with violence and trauma (Pain and Cahill, 2022). Some CYP live with the impacts of violence inflicted upon them, while others are positioned as causing trauma through acts of violence within constrained, unequal and emotionally charged environments (Fraser, 2015). These experiences are not separate, but circulate through the same places, relationships and institutions, shaping how safety, responsibility and accountability are understood and enacted. In schools, streets, community spaces, the home and digital environments, CYP negotiate justice through emotions, as they navigate harm, its consequences and possibilities for repair (Andal, 2023; Marrun and Rodriguez-Campo, 2023).

CYP occupy a contested role in the future imaginaries of a just world. As a beacon of hope and promise, CYP play a vital role in acting towards social, environmental, political, and economic justice (Paterson-Young et al., 2024). On the other end of the dualism, CYP are often underscored as vulnerable, inexperienced and naïve to the ‘real world’ or even seen as troublemakers and agitators (Schliehe, 2021). 

This session seeks to explore how justice is felt through practices of navigating harm, seeking safety, supporting peers, and challenging exclusion. Attending justice as a youth centered emotional geography foregrounds how CYP actively interpret, perform and produce justice in ways that are deeply relational, situated and tied to the places they move through. 
We invite theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions that engage with, but are not limited to the following themes:
•	How CYP make sense of and negotiate safety within and across spaces, institutors, routines and rhythms 
•	CYP’s perspectives on what constitutes just, safe and livable communities and spaces
•	Participatory and youth-led approaches to researching emotions, justice and safety
•	Explorations into the emotions of justice and how justice is felt by CYP
•	Everyday spatialities and practices through which CYP create or claim justice

If you interested in joining the session, please send a short abstract (up to 250 words) along with your name, email address, and affiliation by 20th February 2026 to E.Haslam at newcastle.ac.uk and anna.schliehe at uni-bonn.de.