Annual Meeting 2026
«Growing Up in Challenging Contexts»
We warmly invite submissions for the 7th Annual Meeting of the Swiss Society for Early Childhood Research (SSECR). This conference, titled «Growing Up in Challenging Contexts», will take place on 2–3 February 2026 in Fribourg.
From both a global and local perspectives, children's upbringing is characterised by multiple challenges, crises and vulnerabilities. Such challenging contexts always arise against specific socio-political, economic, ecological, social, psychological, or medical backgrounds. These contexts hold different meanings for individuals, groups, specific milieus, entire societies or the world as a whole, such as the climate crisis, armed conflicts or massive inequalities. How children, their families, early childhood professionals, and researchers experience, perceive and deal with these challenging contexts is at the centre of this year's annual meeting. Questions such as «What conditions contribute to the vulnerability of children?» or «How can (multiple) burdens on families be alleviated socially, politically, psychologically and economically?» will be discussed taking an interdisciplinary and interprofessional perspective. Besides fostering scientific exchange, the aim of the conference is also to convey insights from research into everyday practice. Therefore, researchers, scholars, students, professionals, and policy makers from all areas of early childhood are particularly invited.
We are delighted to announce two internationally renowned and interdisciplinary researchers as keynote speakers for the conference, who will share some aspects of their broad research on children's subjective well-being, inequalities, health risks, poverty, racism, discrimination, and global social justice.
Prof. Dr. Shazly Savahl | Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Netherlands | University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Dr. Stephanie Simon | Institute for Social Pedagogy, Adult Education and Pedagogy in Early Childhood, Dortmund University, Germany