Developmental psychology has long aspired to inform how societies care for children, yet the routes from research findings to practice innovation to policy change remain uneven, contested, and rarely made explicit to those entering the field. This four-hour seminar takes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as its orienting framework and asks what it means, methodologically and ethically, to do developmental research that contributes meaningfully to the realization of children's rights.

Drawing on more than two decades of work spanning empirical research, clinical practice, and international policy consultancy, the seminar is organized around three project case studies. The first traces a line from foundational research on infant empathy and intersubjectivity to Video Interaction Guidance as a practice tool, and onward to a UNICEF ECARO compendium mapping parenting support services across ten European and Central Asian countries. The second turns to child protection, drawing on epidemiological research on the prevalence of violence against children (BECAN), comparative work on the prevention of interpersonal violence in childhood (INTOVIAN), and applied research and consultancy on the prevention of child trafficking, with particular attention to unaccompanied and separated children, a population at elevated risk in contemporary European migration contexts. Methodological reflection here will consider what prevalence data, qualitative evidence on vulnerability pathways, and system-level analyses each contribute to a rights-based prevention agenda, and how such evidence has been mobilized in national child protection systems and intergovernmental policy. A third strand draws briefly on ongoing work developing Portugal's National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care.

Throughout, the seminar makes visible the craft of translation between domains: how research questions are reframed for policy audiences, how evidence is mobilized in stakeholder dialogues, and how rights-based commitments shape methodological choices. The closing discussion turns to participants' own work, asking how doctoral projects in developmental psychology can be designed, from the outset, with practice and policy uptake in view.

Docente: Prof Korina Hatzinikolaou

Developmental psychology has long aspired to inform how societies care for children, yet the routes from research findings to practice innovation to policy change remain uneven, contested, and rarely made explicit to those entering the field. This four-hour seminar takes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as its orienting framework and asks what it means, methodologically and ethically, to do developmental research that contributes meaningfully to the realization of children's rights.

Drawing on more than two decades of work spanning empirical research, clinical practice, and international policy consultancy, the seminar is organized around three project case studies. The first traces a line from foundational research on infant empathy and intersubjectivity to Video Interaction Guidance as a practice tool, and onward to a UNICEF ECARO compendium mapping parenting support services across ten European and Central Asian countries. The second turns to child protection, drawing on epidemiological research on the prevalence of violence against children (BECAN), comparative work on the prevention of interpersonal violence in childhood (INTOVIAN), and applied research and consultancy on the prevention of child trafficking, with particular attention to unaccompanied and separated children, a population at elevated risk in contemporary European migration contexts. Methodological reflection here will consider what prevalence data, qualitative evidence on vulnerability pathways, and system-level analyses each contribute to a rights-based prevention agenda, and how such evidence has been mobilized in national child protection systems and intergovernmental policy. A third strand draws briefly on ongoing work developing Portugal's National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care.

Throughout, the seminar makes visible the craft of translation between domains: how research questions are reframed for policy audiences, how evidence is mobilized in stakeholder dialogues, and how rights-based commitments shape methodological choices. The closing discussion turns to participants' own work, asking how doctoral projects in developmental psychology can be designed, from the outset, with practice and policy uptake in view.

Docente: Korina Hatzinikolaou