Years of investigating ways to support refugee children’s social and emotional development will be spotlighted at a high-profile conference in August.
St. Francis Xavier University psychology professor Dr. Tara Callaghan led an international research partnership to assess an intervention to support the development of Rohingya children whose families fled genocide in Myanmar. The children and their families live in one of the largest refugee camps in the world, located in Bangladesh hosting close to one million Rohingya refugees.
The conference, Pathways to Kindness: Promoting Refugee and Newcomer Children’s Health and Flourishing, will be held at the University of Toronto Mississauga from August 22 to August 24, to coincide with the Rohingya Genocide Commemoration Day, August 25, 2017.
“For many years, I and other researchers in developmental science have been deeply troubled by the extremely negative impact that war and violent conflict have on the development of the millions of children living amidst these horrors,” said Dr. Callaghan. “Yet we often felt at a loss for what we could do. What I have discovered in this research partnership is that bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise is the only way to address the global challenges that are facing humanity, including the devastating impact that war has on children’s development.
“We hope that our conference serves to amplify the collaboration we have started, and with input from research, practice, and lived experience, we can build effective supports to optimize all children’s development.”
The findings from her recent research will also be published in the Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development series to be released in August.
StFX associate psychology professor Dr. John Corbit is a co-author of this research and will also present at the upcoming conference. Dr. Corbit’s research focuses on understanding how children's social environments interact with their developing cognitive capacities to shape cooperative behaviors such as sharing, collaboration, fairness, and helping.
“I was particularly interested in joining this project because it provided a natural bridge to extend my research on the positive effects of collaboration on children's cooperation, specifically focusing on children for whom early traumatic experiences may have led to vulnerabilities in these capacities,” said Dr. Corbit.
“I saw this as an opportunity to work with a great team to apply our findings from basic psychological research to a real-world environment, where we could make a meaningful positive change in children's lives.”
The conference will include presentations from academic researchers, humanitarian practitioners and refugee community members. Several distinguished guests, including Canadian UN Ambassador Bob Rae, UNHCR EU Representative Jean-Nicolas Beuze, and Alexander Humboldt Professor Dr. Tina Malti, will share their insights on Canada’s role in the global refugee crisis and ways to mobilize research to improve refugee children’s health and flourishing.
More details on the conference, registration, final schedule and associated events to follow in September and October can be found here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/ccdmp/pathways-kindness-conference
