Sophia Georgescu
PhD Education / Child and Youth Participation Specialist
University of Stirling / Children’s Parliament
Website:
Research Interests
Interested in children’s rights, eco-feminism, and the politics and geographies of nature and childhood.
Broader interests include education, political ecology, indigenous knowledges, posthumanism, environmental politics and affect.
Research Projects
1. Current Research
My PhD research explores children’s participation rights in the current climate crisis and sixth mass extinction of species. My thesis, titled ‘Exploring children’s rights to participation and the geographies of meaning-making in the sixth mass extinction’ is underpinned by children’s experiences and knowledge-formation through, within, and about interspecies nature in the current context of biodiversity loss across Scotland and internationally. Through co-created research activities and material, interspecies experiences, I consider children’s meaning-making in situ and their participation in biodiversity loss responses. This draws together interdisciplinary perspectives on children’s rights, interspecies nature, and educational responses to biodiversity loss that promote eco-social wellbeing. I seek to explore how these responses can be co-created with children to prioritize interspecies agencies in meaning-making through the material relations of childhood.
2. Other / Previous Research
I am a child rights and participation specialist with Scotland’s Children’s Parliament, where I lead environmental projects, including facilitating child participation in Scottish Government’s Learning for Sustainability Leadership Group (2021-ongoing) and national engagement between children and decision-makers for COP26 and Scotland’s Climate Assembly, the first climate citizens’ assembly in the world to include children (2021).
In my role at Children’s Parliament, I am also exploring the links between children’s human rights and ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute and the Scottish AI Alliance (2022-ongoing). Through arts-based methods, we are co-creating key messages with children on kinds of knowledge and children’s rights in relation to more-than-human AI technologies.
Links to Published Works:
Report on Learning for Sustainability and children’s human rights in Scotland here, and AI and children’s human rights here. My reporting on children’s human rights and climate change can be found here.