Thursday Seminars by Katharine Throssel

Kids on Climate

Abstract

This presentation outlines the theoretical framework of the KIDSONCLIMATE project, as well as an update on the ongoing fieldwork. This project aims to explore how the emotions that children and pre-adolescents may experience through learning about the climate crisis can influence their attitudes toward democracy and their sense of political efficacy.

To this end, it draws on literature in political science, political sociology, and social psychology to examine the links between affective responses—particularly feelings of betrayal and distress, hope, or commitment—to the climate crisis, and the perception of the responses provided by different political actors to this situation. The project focuses specifically on a population of young people described as “average,” neither activist nor apathetic, to bring visibility to a group that has been little studied in research on these issues. In particular, it proposes to explore how adults’ views on children’s competence, their voices, and their legitimacy on these issues can impact the development of forms of interest in politics, political competence, and a sense of political efficacy among children and young people.

Bio

Katharine Throssell is currently a Marie Curie Fellow at UCLouvain. Her research focuses on political learning among children and young adolescents, with a particular focus on active socialization, identities, and political narratives for children. She notably published Child and Nation (Peter Lang, 2015) which deals with the impact of banal everyday nationalism on the construction of worldviews in primary school children.