After an enriching conference in 2025, Heavy Childhoods 2026 will run under the title “Curating Future Nostalgia inHeavy Times”

Children have long been constructed as both future and origin. Radical natalism, climate change, displacement, and genocide are reshaping these constructs in disturbing ways. At the same time, social media and community projects are creating the conditions for children’s awareness of their own subject position, their soft power, and their rights. This year, we will focus on children’s voices as resistance, transformation, and elegy. Delegates are invited to explore “heaviness” and the weight of a future shared. We explicitly encourage contributions from all disciplines, as well as transcultural research. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The ‘terrorist’ child
-Children’s voices and weapons
- Children and heaviness in music and industry
- Affective becomings of childhood
- The child writing back
- Changing intergenerational relationships
- Heavy futures and children’s media
-Nostalgia: reshaping a future past

Format: Online symposium hosted by The University of Huddersfield, UK
Date: 16.02.2026
Contact: Please send abstracts of approximately 250 words to heavychildhoods@gmail.com
Abstract submission date: 15.12.2025
We are committed to academic solidarity. There are no conference fees. For enquiries contact: Dr. Barratt-Peacock at heavychildhoods@gmail.com or  R.Barratt-Peacock@hud.ac.uk