CALL FOR PAPERS Investment and Citizenship: Towards a Transdisciplinary Dialogue in Child & Youth Rights - Brock University - Ontario, Canada - July 19-21, 2006 Our focus is on two of the contemporary, dominant rights-based discourses: investment and citizenship. In choosing these themes, we wish to examine children’s and young peoples’ human rights within and through applied contexts. The conference is keenly interested in how it is that rights are being conceptualized and operationalized within domestic legislation, social policies, and institutional settings, as well as comparative rights work and discourses beyond industrialized welfare states such as Canada or United Kingdom nations. The conference sub-theme is ‘child and youth rights-based theoretical approaches in law, policy and institutional practice’.  As such, papers, posters, symposia, and workshops related to the promotion, monitoring, and evaluation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) within Canada and abroad are welcomed. Topic areas include: (1) Law, policy and institutional practices supporting active citizenship for under-18s, (2) Theorizing, teaching and implementing the CRC in public and post-secondary Education, (3) First Nations, cross-cultural and international perspectives, (4) Monitoring the CRC and collecting rights-based data, and (5) Participatory rights of vulnerable populations. Submissions outside of these topic areas are also quite welcome. Keynote speakers include: Ms. Cindy Blackstock (Executive Director, First Nations Child and Family Society), Professor Erica Burman (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Robbie Chase (University of Winnipeg), Dr. Phillip Cook (Institute for Child Rights and Development, Victoria BC), Dr. John Davis (University of Edinburgh), Professor Jaap Doek (Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations), Professor Michael Freeman (Professor of English Law and the Editor of the International Journal of Children's Rights), Mr. Stephen Lewis (former Deputy-Executive Director of UNICEF) and The Honourable Senator Landon Pearson, retired, (Ottawa). While acknowledging that Canada is falling behind many of its OECD partners in important areas of promoting and implementing the CRC, this conference is dedicated to exploring the current children’s rights discourse from multiple perspectives. By bringing together children and young people from local, national and international groups, scholars, Convention experts and individuals from other cultural and legal contexts, as well as those from various disciplinary perspectives, this conference aims to foster an emerging ‘transdisciplinary knowledge exchange’ and provide opportunities for further collaboration. Graduate students and junior researchers are strongly urged to submit papers and attend. Please circulate this call for papers to others who may be interested in participating in this very first Brock University child and youth rights conference. Additional conference details are available on the conference website www.childsrights.ca. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2006. Questions about the conference may be directed to: Tom O’Neill, Dawn Zinga, or Richard C. Mitchell Brock University Department of Child and Youth Studies toneill@brocku.ca; dzinga@brocku.ca; richard.mitchell@brocku.ca