Bodies That Don’t Behave: Leakiness and Containment in Childhood & Youth

We are delighted to host experts, practitioners, and researchers to our one-day event, 'Bodies That Don't Behave: Leakiness and Containment Across Childhood and Youth', taking place on 22 October 2026 .

The event will run from 10:00 - 15:00 (GMT) with options to attend in person at Liverpool John Moores University (Room TBC) and online.

This event has been organised by Poppy Budworth (University of Liverpool/Manchester) and Catherine Wilkinson (Liverpool John Moores University). This event has kindly been funded by the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (GCFYRG).

The event will comprise:

1. A panel of experts focusing on everyday leaky bodily processes of children and young people with a Q&A.

1. A workshop on designing sensory/embodied methods for exploring leakiness with children and young people, e.g., using materials such as liquids, slime and fabric to think about leakiness and containment. An asynchronous option to participate in a creative activity will be offered to those attending online.

More details about panelists and activities to come soon...

Please contact [email protected] with any questions. If we can make this event more accessible for you, please let us know in the ticket form.

Longer description: Bodies That Don’t Behave: Leakiness and Containment Across Childhood and Youth is an interdisciplinary hybrid event that examines how children and young people’s bodies are constructed, regulated, and perceived as leaky and in need of control. Focusing on everyday bodily processes such as urination, defecation, salivation, menstruation, and sweating, this event seeks to interrogate how norms around containment for children and young people are produced and enforced across social, cultural, educational, and health-related contexts. The aim is to encourage critical and creative conversations about the governance of ‘non-normative’ bodies in childhood and youth, that is bodies and their fluids, for instance, wee, poo, snot, tears, pus, sweat, spit, and blood. It brings together researchers, practitioners, and creative contributors to explore experiences of bodily “misbehaviour” of children and young people across a range of spatial scales.