School of SSESW academic Dina Belluigi (Education) is pleased to be acting in an advisory capacity to the ‘Helping Kids!’ research project led by Dr Laura K Taylor of University College Dublin. The project focuses on the next generation of peacebuilders, rooted in a decade of community-based research in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The researchers will study helping behaviours across geographic regions (North/South), nationalities (British/Irish), religious groups (Catholic/Protestant) and ethnic minorities (Irish Travellers/Refugees).

Working with children ages 6 to 11 years old, they will use innovative methods, such as drawings and interactive games, to understand when and why children help others. They argue that children helping and sharing across group lines is an antecedent of peacebuilding, and that recognising children’s agency is key to deeper reconciliation. The project is enabled by an Irish Research Council New Foundations Award.

Dina Belluigi has been invited to serve on the Local Advisory Council of this project as a Board member of the Migrant and Minority Education Council Thinktank and as a researcher with expertise in art-based methods and legacies of conflict, inequalities and division in Education.

See more about the project as it progresses at Helping Kids!