Book Launch: Everyday Lives of Children Who Have Experienced Domestic Abuse

By Brenda Herbert (Policy Press/Bristol University, February 2026)

Discussions on children who have experienced domestic abuse often focuses on trauma and risks, and little is known about their lives beyond abuse. This risks pathologising children and reinforcing colonial and patriarchal social norms. This groundbreaking book challenges dominant narratives by drawing on an 18-month multimodal ethnography with children in an inner London borough.

Offering a radical and holistic perspective on children’s personhood, this book situates their everyday lives within broader global debates on childhood, decolonisation and social justice. It engages with the works of Black feminist, decolonial and Indigenous scholars, calling for a fundamental rethinking of how we support and understand children who have experienced domestic abuse.

ABOUT THE EVENT
We are pleased to have Dr Kirrily Pells (UCL) and Dr Utsa Mukherjee (Brunel) as respondents to the book.

Open to all. Please register to attend.

This book launch is organised by the Critical Childhood Studies Centre. The Centre is a home for world-leading scholarship about childhood as a socio-political, cultural, and historical phenomenon in diverse global contexts. The Centre provides a focal point for faculty and students at all levels in UCL to engage in innovative and multi-disciplinary research, teaching, and public engagement geared towards achieving social justice with and for children and young people.

For more information, email us at [email protected] or join our mailing list

British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow at UCL Social Research Institute

Her research project is titled 'The (Un)Making of Happy Childhoods'. It is a multimodal ethnography with primary school aged children. Brenda's previous research was with children who had experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention. She was the Sociological Review Fellow 2024/25, and her PhD thesis will be published as a monograph by Policy Press/Bristol University Press in February 2026.

More about Brenda Herbert

Associate Professor in Childhood at UCL Social Research Institute

My research, teaching and public engagement are in the field of critical childhood studies and my work concerns global childhoods and children's rights especially in relation to violence, memory, peace, and social justice. Across my research projects is a focus on creative arts, arts-based methods, and co-production. At UCL I am a member of the Critical Childhood Studies Research Group.

More about Kirrily Pells

Senior Lecturer in Education at Department of Education, Brunel University of London

Utsa's research interests broadly centre around the following axes: Children's everyday lives with a particular focus on generational order, parenting strategies, and children's agency; Intersection of race and class within parenting ideologies and family practices; Reproduction of social inequalities in the context of leisure; Critical race theory approaches to the study of childhood and parenting; South Asia and global South Asian diaspora; Critical sexuality studies.

More about Utsa Mukherjee

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)