The wider relevance of undertaking research with children

This special edition of Children’s Geographies is the second in a set of two special issues arising from the Emerging Issues in Children’s Geographies conference held at Brunel University in June 2005 (The first issue in this collection appeared in Children’s Geographies, 4 (3)). The conference attracted a wealth of innovative work that sought to build on existing strengths and to stretch current conceptual and methodological developments both within the sub-discipline and through multi-disciplinary engagement. As at the previous Children’s Geographies conference at St. Andrews in 2004 (see the special issue of Children’s Geographies, 5 (3)), many papers sought to deal with novel, thought-provoking, and often complex, methodological questions. It seemed appropriate to bring these papers together as a special collection both for what they can offer others working with children and youth and those working in other sub-disciplines within and beyond Geography. Therefore, in this short introduction we have sought to illuminate the innovation currently taking place in methodological debates within Children’s Geographies and highlight how it might benefit human geography as a whole to draw on these discussions (where they are often currently sidelined)