Participants Profiles
| NLUO ISCI 2024 Participants | Professional Profiles of the Authors and Participants |
| Tatjana Dietz | Tatjana Dietz is a PhD Candidate, research associate and lecturer at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany and is working at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. The scope of her interests focus on Childhood and Family Studies, Social Pedagogy, Infancy and Early Childhood, Children’s Rights, Child Protection, Historical Perspectives on Childhood and Qualitative Research. |
| Sunsuk Kim | Dep. of Social Welfare, Korea National University of Transportation/ child rights, child subjective well-being, child in out-of-home care, child’s poverty |
| Sharon Go | Professor Sharon Goldfeld is a paediatrician, researcher and policy advisor focussing on child development and health equity. She is Director of the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital’s, and Theme Director for Population Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. With a decade of experience in state government as a senior policymaker in health and education, including holding the role of Principal Medical Advisor in the Victorian Department of Education and Training, Sharon is uniquely positioned to seamlessly straddle research, policy and practice. Her expertise is highly sought after with appointments to government Expert Advisory Groups in health, education and social services departments including her recent appoint to the National Early Years Strategy Advisory Group. |
| Samia Michail | Samia is a lecturer and researcher at Western Sydney University currently exploring the impact of different socio-political landscapes on children’s wellbeing, specifically on their rights to protection and participation. She has a keen interest in disrupting traditional ways of working to safeguard children and young people by critically considering the political nature of child voice alongside the lived experience of the child. |
| Sabirah Adams | Sabirah Adams is an Associate Professor and registered Research Psychologist in the Language Development Group, Academic Development Programme, Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research expertise is within the areas of children’s subjective and environmental well-being, child indicators, participatory research with children, and capacity development of students and staff, and academic literacies in higher education. She is the principal investigator of the South African Children’s Worlds: International Survey on Children’s Well-Being, and the Multinational Qualitative Study on Children’s Well-Being. She is a member of the National Children’s Rights Intersectoral Coordinating Committee (Department of Social Development, South Africa). She serves on the editorial board of Child Indicators Research, and is a member of the Children’s Worlds core group. |
| Robert Rudolf | Robert Rudolf is a professor in the College of International Studies at Korea University. He currently also serves as the Deputy Vice President for International Affairs of Korea University. Trained as an economist, his research usually crosses the boundaries between various disciplines including economics, sociology, psychology, and international studies. His research interest are in the fields of economic and human development, gender, quality of life, and education. In the past, Robert has been a visiting fellow at research institutes and INGOs in Santiago de Chile, Singapore, Mexico City, and Berlin. His research has been published in international journals such as World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Child Indicators Research, and the Journal of Happiness Studies, among others. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and as a member of the academic advisory committee for the design of Korea’s National Child & Adolescent Well-being Indicator System. Robert has been awarded research grants from the Korea Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, and the National Research Foundation of Korea. |
| Rene Iwo | Rene is a Sociology PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He is interested in social demography in low- and middle-income contexts, especially in his home country, Indonesia. His research centers around family life over the life course, exploring topics such as women and parenting, child development and transition to adulthood, as well as intergenerational mobility. |
| Prof. Bong Lee | Seoul National University |
| PINAR UYAN SEMERCI | Prof. Pınar Uyan Semerci is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Centre for Migration Research Director at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her research interests lie at the crossroads between political philosophy, social policy, and methodology, in which she focuses on topics relating to justice, capability approach, citizenship, collective identity formation, othering, polarization, populism, and the well-being of vulnerable groups, particularly children. She has coordinated numerous research projects and published mainly on the capability approach, migration, anti-immigrant attitude, othering, polarization, seasonal agricultural workers, child labour, and child well-being in Turkey. |
| Paloma Vivaldi Vera | PALOMA VIVALDI VERA Researcher, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. Currently she works as a researcher in the National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies (INAPP) in Italy. Her work addresses, among other issues, the well-being and participation of children and adolescents, socio-labor inclusion policies for vulnerable women, evaluation and strengthening of socio-emotional skills of vulnerable population and providing technical assistance in social development programs in the Latin American region.PAOLO RACITI Graduate in Educational Sciences, PHD in Social Services. He is currently a researcher at the National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies (INAPP) of Italy. His work deals, among other issues, with the well-being and participation of children and adolescents, socio-labor inclusion policies for people with disabilities, the evaluation and strengthening of socio-emotional skills of vulnerable population and providing technical assistance in social development programs in the Latin American region. |
| Oliver Nahkur | Oliver Nahkur (PhD in Sociology) is a Research Fellow of Research of Social Wellbeing in University of Tartu, Institute of Social Studies, Estonia. He is a member of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) and International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB) Estonian team; secretary-treasurer of International Sociological Association, Research Committee nr 55 – Social indicators. His research interests include child well-being and vulnerability research and social indicators research, including from cross-national comparative studies perspective. |
| Naime Daoust-Zidane | Naime Daoust-Zidane completed a Master’s in Psychoeducation at the University of Montreal. Her research interests focus on the well-being, mental health, and coping strategies of children with a migration background. She specializes in post-traumatic stress, school engagement, motivation, and the school adaptation of students facing various challenges, including PTSD, drop-out, and acculturation stress. Utilizing mainly qualitative approaches, she emphasizes on child-centered and participative methodologies. |
| Min Sang Yoo | *Institutional affilation: National Youth Policy Institute, South Korea *Subject area expertise and interest: Subjective well-being indicators, Youth NEETs, Social Isolation and loneliness |
| Mayada Karjawally | Mayada Karjawally, Pharm. B.sc., MPH, PhD student at The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University Jerusalem. The scope of research is children’s perceptions of medical neglect. Working at the Haruv Institute as the Health Professional Coordinator. |
| Mark Small | Mark A. Small is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life at Clemson University in South Carolina. Prof. Small has served as principal investigator on grant projects funded by agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation and private foundations within South Carolina to build the capacity of rural faith- and community-based grassroots groups and non-profit organizations to serve at-risk youth and families. Prof. Small has also received a Fulbright scholarship twice to teach community development in the Czech Republic (2004) and more recently in Albania (2017). He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic in 2019 for his work with the faculty of health and social sciences to build their capacity around social work. |
| Lívia Maria Bedin Tomasi | Lívia Maria Bedin is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Department of Developmental and Personality Psychology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and the Graduate Program in Psychology (UFRGS). She is a productivity researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), coordinator of the Community Psychology Research Group (GPPC-UFRGS), and a board member of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI). Post-doctorate in Psychology at the Institut de Recerca de Qualitat de Vida, at Girona University (UdG/Spain). Master and Ph.D from the Graduate Program in Psychology at UFRGS (Brazil) with a sandwich internship at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA/Argentina). Graduated in Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS, Brazil). Dr. Bedin’s research interests include well-being and quality of life throughout the life cycle, research methodology, multivariate statistical analyses and structural equation modelling. |
| Leon Dittmann | Leon Dittmann is a PhD student at the University of Wuppertal. As a former primary school teacher, his main research interests are centered around the perception and development of children in elementary school.In his current research project, he is studying the development of children’s disruptive behaviour into deviant careers by analyzing classroom observations and interviews with children and teachers. The following conference papers and articles are presented as part of this project:
ECER 2023: From disruption to disruptors (with Doris Bühler Niederberger and Claudia Schuchart) |
| Kadri Soo | Kadri Soo (PhD) is a Lecturer of Social Welfare at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research interests include child well-being, children’s rights, child abuse and domestic violence. Judit Strömpl (PhD) is Associate Professor of Social Work Research at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research interests include children’s rights and well-being; children and youth at risk; child protection and trauma-informed substitute care. |
| Grace Spencer | Dr Grace Spencer is an Associate Professor in Young People, Health and Social Equity at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Social Care, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. Her research focuses on young people’s health and their health-related practices with reference to concepts of risk, power and empowerment theory. She has a particular interest in social change, youth transitions, health and social equity. Grace is globally recognised for her expertise in qualitative research methods and ethics with children and young people and she has published extensively on the ethical aspects of research with young people. |
| Frederick de Moll | Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, Social and Educational Inequalities in Childhood and Youth |
| Elizabeth Fernandez | Elizabeth Fernandez, AM (PhD), Professor of Social Work, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia has research and teaching interests in child and family poverty, child protection, pathways and outcomes of children in care, reunification of separated children and outcomes of care leavers, and has published widely on these themes. .Her recent books include Child Protection and the Care Continuum (Fernandez and Delfabbro 2021); Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Child and Family Poverty (Fernandez et al, 2015. She serves on the Board of the International Society for Child Indicators. She is Co Editor of the international journal, Children and Youth Services Review. She was awarded the 2019 ISCI Award for Outstanding Contribution to the field of Child Indicators Research from an International Perspective. In 2023 she was appointed AM Member of the Order of Australia for Service to teaching, research, social justice and Associations. |
| Dr. Sruthi Atmakur-Javdekar | Dr. Sruthi Atmakur-Javdekar is a part-time scholar and full-time architect, landscape architect and environmental psychologist. Sruthi is the founder-director of an interdisciplinary consulting firm, ’GRIT: environmental design + research studio’ that creates environments for children, young people and adults in urban areas of the developing world.Sruthi has a PhD in Environmental Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, and is a recipient of two university gold medals for excellence in Architectural education at undergraduate level in India and holds a masters degree in Landscape Architecture from Virginia Tech.
For over a decade, Sruthi worked as a research associate and project director with the Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG), where her portfolio included development of children’s participatory assessment toolkits and management of global projects related to child friendly cities, communities and schools with UNICEF, Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) and Plan International alongside Dr. Roger Hart and Dr. Pamela Wridt. As a child friendly cities expert, Sruthi supported World Resources Institute (WRI) to develop guidelines and toolkits for making Indian cities friendly for infants, toddlers and caregivers under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Smart Cities Mission’s Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge in partnership with BvLF. |
| Dr. Ginte Martinkene – | Dr. Ginte Martinkene – Doctor of Social Sciences in Sociology. Postdoctoral researcher in Klaipeda University. Subject area expertise and fields of interest: transnational families, migration, life course, transition from childhood to adulthood, childhood, visual methods, leadership. |
| Dr Haridhan Goswami | Dr Haridhan Goswami is a Reader in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. He is a Quantitative Sociologist with an interest in measuring children’s and young people’s wellbeing. He has expertise in designing and developing reliable and valid survey instruments suitable for children and young people and cross-national comparative research. Haridhan is the coordinator of the South Asian Research Network for Childhood and Youth Studies (SARNCYS) which includes academics and researchers from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the UK. He is the country lead of the Children’s Worlds survey in Bangladesh. He serves on the editorial board of the Child Indicators Research journal. |
| Doris Bühler-Niederberger | Doris Bühler-Niederberger Dr. phil., is a sociologist and Rudolf Carnap Senior Professor at University of Wuppertal. She researches childhood, youth and transition to adulthood in different countries. She is particularly interested in age as a social structural dimension, the definition of age categories, and intergenerational relations in public and private contexts. Among her recent publications: Emerald Handbook of Chldhood and Youth in Asian Societies – Generations between local and global dynamics 2023 (with Xiaorong Gu, Jessica Schwittek, Elena Kim); When the family occupies the future – Self-processes and well-being of Kyrgyz children and young people. Child Indicators Research, 2022, 15(4), 1179-1208 (with Jessica Schwittek); Victim, perpetrator, or what else – generational and gender perspectives on children, youth, and violence. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY), Volume 25, 2020 (edited with Lars Albert); Struggling for open awareness – trajectories of violence against children. Children and Youth Services Review, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106769 (with Lars Albert). |
| Diksha Rani | Diksha Rani is a Doctoral Fellow at International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai (India). Diksha’s work focuses on Child Nutrition, specifically on Child Anthropometry where she combines her passion for demography and her drive to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field. Born and raised in the least literate state of India, Diksha is passionate about the role of Nutrition Education and the use of locally available nutrition sources. She has a height of 150 cm which is very low, this interests her more in Stunting. Diksha’s journey in academia began with a strong foundation in Geography and Demography at IIPS and Patna University. Her doctoral research, which explores the application of Composite Index for Anthropometric Failure for Indian Children, has earned her recognition and accolades within her academic community. She has presented her work at several national and international conferences related to Demography and Nutrition. |
| Diego Angemi | Diego Angemi, PhD (Chief, Social Policy, Research and Evaluation @ UNICEF, Tanzania) Economist with excellent analytical skills and extensive applied policy experience. Areas of expertise include poverty and vulnerability analysis, as well as various aspects of public financial management, and the ability to leverage technology and innovation as catalysts for inclusive growth. |
| David Rothwell | David Rothwell is the Barbara Knudson Endowed Chair in Family Policy and Associate Professor in the Human Development and Family Sciences program at Oregon State University. He studies poverty, social policy, and families. Current research projects fall under the following areas (1) family leave and self-sufficiency, (2) poverty measurement and safety net participation, and (3) policies that affect financial capability and asset building. |
| Daniel Stoecklin | Daniel Stoecklin is Associate Professor in Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and affiliated to the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His main areas of research and teaching are the sociology of childhood and children’s rights, children in street situations and children’s participation. He has notably contributed to the Council of Europe’s guidelines on youth participation. |
| Dagmar Kutsar | Dagmar Kutsar is an Associate Professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Her research interests are in family and childhood research and policies |
| Christine Gervais | Christine Gervais is a professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. A nurse with a Ph.D. in psychology, she is a regular researcher for the research team SHERPA: Immigration, diversity, and health. Her research projects focus on family health with a focus on children well-being. |
| Carme MONTSERRAT | Carme Montserrat (PhD) is full professor of Social Psychology at the University of Girona (Spain) and the co-director of Liberi, a research team on Childhood, Youth and Community (https://www.udg.edu/liberi) within the Research Institute on Education at the same University. She has previously worked in the welfare system in the city of Barcelona as well as being consultant with the Council of Europe. Her main areas of research are related to children and young people in vulnerable situations, the protection system, subjective well-being, and children’s rights using quantitative and qualitative methodology. She has authored books and published many papers in prestigious journals and is currently leading national and international research projects. |
| Bheemeshwar Reddy A | Bheemeshwar Reddy A is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani Hyderabad Campus. His research interests include intergenerational mobility, income, health, and education inequality, as well as employment and labour market discrimination. |
| Asher Ben Arieh | Asher Ben-Arieh, is the Haruv Chair for the study of Child Maltreatment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Prof. of Social Work and the Dean of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare as of September 2021. Prof. Ben-Arieh is also the director of the Haruv Institute in Jerusalem. He served for 20 years as the associate director of Israel’s National Council for the Child. Since 1990 and until 2011 he has been the founding editor-in-chief of the annual “State of the Child in Israel”.Asher has published extensively on children’s well-being, child naltreatment and indicators of children well being. Prof. Ben-Arieh is the founding editor-in-chief of the Child Indicators Research journal (CIR) and the Child Well Being: Indicators and research book series.Prof. Ben-Arieh is one of the leading international experts on social indicators, particularly as they relate to child well-being. He initiated and coordinated the International Project “Measuring and Monitoring Children Well-Being”, was among the founding members of the International Society for Children Indicators (ISCI) and elected to be its first co-chair. Currently, Prof. Ben-Arieh is one of the PI’s of the multi-national, multi-million International Study of Children’s Well-being (ISCWeB) research project.Asher was born in Jerusalem he is married and has three children. |
| Andra Reinomägi | Andra Reinomägi is a PhD candidate in sociology in the Institute of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Her primary research interests are child’s well-being and rights of the child from the child’s perspective. In her professional life, Andra is an adviser in the Children’s and Youth Rights Department at the Office of the Chancellor of Justice in Estonia. |
| Ana Loreto Ditzel Lacoa | Psychologist, adjunct professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad del Desarrollo, PhD in Psychology, Health and Quality of Life from the University of Girona, Spain and Master in Management and Public Policy from the Adolfo Ibañez University in Chile. Specialized in the design and execution of public policies in the psychosocial area and researcher in subjective well-being in childhood and adolescence. Member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Child Indicators, ISCI. |
| Aldrie Henry – Lee | Professor Aldrie Henry – Lee is the current Pro Vice-Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research, The University of the West Indies (The UWI). A Sociologist by profession, she has researched and published extensively on social policy issues affecting small island developing states (SIDS).Since joining the university in 1995, Professor Henry – Lee has researched and published on public policy, poverty, gender, human rights and childhood. She has also been involved in teaching courses in social policy both at the graduate and the undergraduate levels. Among the courses that she has developed are “Deviance and Conflict and Social Management,” “Social Inequality, Inequity and Marginalization” and “Social Investment in Children.”
For the last 17 years, Professor Henry – Lee has been the main organiser of the annual regional Caribbean Child Research conference which facilitates equal voice to adult and child researchers. In 2015, the conference produced a policy document with recommendations for the improvement in quality of life for children in Jamaica. The policy document was handed to the then Prime Minister of Jamaica. Professor Henry – Lee is the recipient of several awards for her research and teaching. In recognition of her outstanding work, in 2020, Professor Aldrie Henry – Lee was selected for a Vice Chancellor’s Award for all-round excellence. |
| AHN, JAEJIN | Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Gachon University, South Korea. Research subjects mainly covers the social services for vulnerable children such as adoption and child maltreatment and child well-being. |
