What does it mean to put children's voices at the centre and truly recognise their capacity for change?Through rich, interdisciplinary research spanning Australia, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, India and the UK, this book illuminates how children actively negotiate, resist and reshape the structures around them. It champions children’s agency as central to reimagining childhoods beyond western-dominated narratives, advocating for child-led theorisation and practice.Offering a timely and critical examination of the tensions shaping children’s lives – across societies, systems and settings – it challenges readers to rethink the dominant idealisations of childhood, pushing forward new conversations about childhood in the 21st century.

What does it mean to put children's voices at the centre and truly recognise their capacity for change?Through rich, interdisciplinary research spanning Australia, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, India and the UK, this book illuminates how children actively negotiate, resist and reshape the structures around them. It champions children’s agency as central to reimagining childhoods beyond western-dominated narratives, advocating for child-led theorisation and practice.Offering a timely and critical examination of the tensions shaping children’s lives – across societies, systems and settings – it challenges readers to rethink the dominant idealisations of childhood, pushing forward new conversations about childhood in the 21st century.