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Picture  of Heather Montgomery

Prf Heather Montgomery

Professor Of Anthropology And Childhood

School of Education, Childhood, Youth & Sport

heather.montgomery@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

I started out my academic life as a social anthropologist. After a first degree in English Literature I studied for a PhD at Cambridge which I wrote on child sexual abuse and exploitation in Thailand. I have held teaching and research positions at the univierities of Sussex, Trondheim, Rice, Texas and Oxford. My research interests lie within Childhood Studies, especially the history and anthropology of childhood, children’s rights, and interdisciplinary studies of child abuse and violence against children.  I am also currently the Qualifications Director of the Undergraduate Open programme within the university..

Research interests

Interdisciplinary studies of child abuse, the anthropology of children and childhood; respresentations of childhood; the history of childhood; children and violence; children's rights.

Teaching interests

Open Undergraduate Qualification (Director)  

E225: Child development: birth to adolescence

E104: Introduction to Childhood & Youth Studies & Psychology

E232: Exploring Childhood & Youth Studies

EK313: Issues in Research with Children & Young People

E809:   Frameworks for Critical Practice with Children and Young People (60 credits)

E808: Children and Young People’s Worlds (60 credits)

 

I have also contributed to modules on Children’s Literature, Law and Child Psychology

 

Impact and engagement

Editor in Chief, Childhood Studies, Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press

The Conversation. “Infanticide: vulnerable mothers who kill their babies can be granted leniency – so why is this historic law being rejected in favour of harsher punishment?” 

https://theconversation.com/infanticide-vulnerable-mothers-who-kill-their-babies-can-be-granted-leniency-so-why-is-this-historic-law-being-rejected-in-favour-of-harsher-punishment-210735

External collaborations

Evaluation and Monitoring for the Oak Foundation, UNICEF and ECPAT

 

Projects

Understanding children's resilience in contexts of abuse and exploitation: Outline proposal for the Evaluation of the Oak Foundation's international Bamboo Project. (E-09-010-HM)

Montgomery and Woodhead will evaluate the Bamboo Project, funded by the Oak Foundation. The Bamboo Project is an international learning initiative to understand resilience in children exposed to sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. This proposal will examine: The overall learning strategy and its implementation in practice; Key processes involving relevant stakeholders at international and national levels, including the framing of the research, the resources allocated, the different processes and structures aimed at providing support and oversight at both local and global levels, and accompanying strategies for communication and learning; The local research projects in each of the selected countries, including their compliance with the guiding elements for the research outlined by the ISC, the contextualisation of the concepts and the potential for cross cultural application and learning offered by the design and implementation of each; The work of the ‘local’ research groups tasked with completing country reports including retrospectively reviewing compliance with ethical standards, the research design, data management and analysis, and explicitly including techniques for finding and interviewing children, and any implications from the resulting revisions to numbers and sub-groups, based on the realities found and documented during implementation of the research.

Generational trajectories of children’s work and school education in the Korean context: Choices, constraints and values in a changing society

This project explores generational trajectories of the views, choices, and non-choices of children’s participation in economic activities and school education in South Korea where, after six decades of rapid economic growth, it is possible to examine several generations with very different childhood experiences. It will produce knowledge about the country where very little research has been conducted on the topic as well as findings that will inform wider international policy debates on the relationship between children’s work and school education in changing global and local environments. Methodologically it will also contribute to the growing theorisation on understanding childhoods through a broader life-course and generational lens. The project will involve fieldwork in two agricultural villages with populations with relatively diverse age groups. The fieldwork will involve interviews with adults of differing ages and children on a range of issues concerning the topic and the collection of contextual data to help interpret interview data.

Publications

Book

Familiar Violence: A History of Child Abuse (2024)

Parenting the First Twelve Years: What the Evidence Tells Us (2018)

Children and young people’s worlds (2nd edition) (2018)

Childhood, Youth and Violence in Global Contexts: Researchers and Practitioners in Dialogue (2014)

Childhood and Violence in the Western Tradition (2010)

Children's literature: Classic texts and contemporary trends (2009)

Children and young people’s worlds: Developing frameworks for integrated practice (2009)

An introduction to childhood: Anthropological perspectives on children's lives (2008)

Changing childhoods: global and local (2003)

Understanding childhood: an interdisciplinary approach (2002)

Modern Babylon?: Prostituting children in Thailand (2001)

Book Chapter

Owning our mistakes: Confessions of an unethical researcher (2023)

What is Childhood and Youth Studies? (2023)

Global childhoods (2023)

Adolescents, teenagers, and youth: A time of change (2023)

Children’s Rights and Child Prostitution: Critical Reflections on Thailand in the 1990s and Beyond (2022)

Anthropological Perspectives on Social Development (2022)

Beyond talk: Learning from children and young people experiencing a family health crisis (2019)

Working effectively with African Caribbean young women: an intersectional approach (2019)

Wanted men? Gendered discourses in work with children and young people (2019)

'I blame the parents': families, experts and the state (2019)

Children’s rights and cultural relativism (2018)

Children’s and young people’s cultures (2018)

Inequality and the social and cultural capital of childhood and youth (2018)

Food in children and young people’s lives: ambiguous agency and contested moralities (2018)

Reconciling Childhood and Youth Studies and developmental psychology (2018)

Young men and gender identity (2018)

Children and Sex Tourism: The Case of Thailand (2018)

Anthropological Perspectives on Children’s Rights (2016)

Understanding the indefensible: reflections on fieldwork with child prostitutes in Thailand (2016)

The Rise of Childhood Studies (2016)

Anthropological approaches to childhood (2015)

Prostitution (child) (2015)

The Dynamics of Culture (2015)

Transitions to adulthood (2015)

Gender and sexuality (2015)

Participant observation (2014)

Children’s rights since Margaret Thatcher (2014)

¿Qué es un niño? La visón desde la antropología (2012)

Prevailing voices in debates over child prostitution (2012)

What is a child? What is childhood? (2011)

Child Sex Tourism: Is extra-territorial legislation the answer? (2010)

Unwanted children and adoption in England (2010)

Introduction: Childhood and violence in the Western tradition (2010)

Learning gender roles (2010)

The rights of the child: Rightfully mine! (2010)

Stigmatising and removing defective children from society: the influence of eugenic thinking (2010)

Childhood (2009)

The purposes of children's literature (2009)

Children and young people’s voices (2009)

Children, young people and poverty (2009)

Children and families in an international context (2009)

Children and young people's participation (2009)

Children and young people's voices (2009)

What constitutes transgressive sex? The case of child prostitution in Thailand (2009)

Innocence and experience revisited (2008)

Child sexual abuse: an Anthropological perspective (2007)

Child sexual abuse: The view from anthropology (2007)

Moving (2007)

A comparative perspective (2007)

Participation (2007)

Child prostitution (2006)

Innocence and experience: a historical approach to childhood and sexuality (2004)

Children, poverty and social inequality (2003)

Intervening in children's lives (2003)

Children and violence (2003)

Family, kinship and beyond (2003)

Adversities and resilience (2003)

Childhood in time and place (2003)

Children's participation in society (2003)

Mothers' images of children and their implications for maternal response (2003)

Children and rights (2002)

Innocence and experience (2002)

The child in development (2002)

Imposing rights?: A case study of child prostitution in Thailand (2001)

Child sex tourism in Thailand (2001)

Child Sex Tourists: Myths and Realities’ (2001)

Motherhood, fertility and ambivalence among young prostitutes in Thailand (2001)

Journal Article

[Book review] Belittled citizens: The cultural politics of childhood on Bangkok’s margins, by Giuseppe Bolotta (2022)

[Book review] Steinberg, Jonah. A garland of bones: child runaways in India (2021)

[Book review] Golden, Deborah; Erdreich, Lauren and Roberman, Sveta. Mothering, education and culture: Russian, Palestinian and Jewish middle‐class mothers in Israeli Society (2021)

Childhood Studies and child psychology: Disciplines in dialogue? (2021)

[Book Review] Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood (2018)

Rural children’s work and school education in the context of rapid economic growth in South Korea (2018)

Understanding Child Prostitution in Thailand in the 1990s (2015)

Child prostitution as filial duty? The morality of child-rearing in a slum community in Thailand (2014)

Children's bodies: the battleground for their rights? (2013)

Defining child trafficking & child prostitution: the case of Thailand (2011)

Children’s rights in and out of the womb (2011)

Rumours of child trafficking after natural disasters: Fact, fiction or fantasy? (2011)

Re-socialising the child from potential enemy to protected innocent: the early fundraising of the Save the Children Fund (2010)

Focusing on the child, not the prostitute: shifting the emphasis in accounts of child prostitution (2010)

Children within anthropology: lessons from the past (2009)

Buying Innocence: Child-sex tourists in Thailand (2008)

Are child prostitutes child workers? A case study (2008)

Working with child prostitutes in Thailand: problems of practice and interpretation (2007)

Gendered childhoods: a cross disciplinary overview (2005)

Discussion paper in response to 'Dangerous trade-offs: The behavioral ecology of child labor and prostitution in rural northern Thailand' by Lisa Rende Taylor (2005)

Report

Trafficking Women and Children: Overcoming the Illegal Sex Trade (2005)