We are excited to announce our new researchers Tamsin Cavaliero and Susan McDonnell who will be measuring the impact of our Our Lives, Our Voices project on participants from a rights-based perspective.

Dr Tamsin Cavaliero is a Lecturer in the Department of Social Science at IT Sligo. Her research interests include Creative Methodologies, Educational Inclusion, Groupwork, Cultural Contexts of Childhood and Youth, Travellers. Prior to taking up her lecturing post she worked in practice in a range of educational settings with the Travelling Community. Tamsin is a trained Graphic Facilitator. Her PhD research involved a six year intergenerational ethnographic study of Irish Traveller Women negotiating home and school environments.

Dr Susan McDonnell is a lecturer in the Department of Social Science at IT Sligo. Her research interests include children’s rights and agency, migration and race in children’s lives, the politics of care and caring, creative and narrative research methods. Prior to joining IT Sligo in 2007, she worked as an artist/ facilitator in a range of community contexts. Her PhD research utilised arts-based methods with children to explore constructions of race and belonging by migrant and non-migrant children in Irish classrooms. She is currently Chair of the Child and Youth Participation SIG at the all-island Children’ s Research Network.

Their research will focus on the arts and creativity as a means of articulating and realising rights and will explore the impact on participants of being part of a child-led book project that focuses on their lives, voices, and creative expressions. The research will also explore the effect of child-led publications on other children, particularly those who are not typically represented in books and educational materials.

We looking forward to seeing how this research develops!