By regarding children as actors and conducting empirical research on children's agency, Childhood Studies have gained significant influence on a wide range of different academic disciplines. This has made agency one of the key concepts of Childhood Studies, with articles on the subject featured in handbooks and encyclopaedias.Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood is the first collection devoted to the central concept of agency in Childhood Studies. With contributions from experts in the field, the chapters cover theoretical, practical, historical, transnational and institutional dimensions of agency, rekindling discussion and introducing fundamental and contemporary sociological perspectives to the field of research. Particular attention is paid to connecting agency in the social sciences with Childhood Studies, considering both the theoretical foundations and the practice of research into agency. Empirical case studies are also explored, which focus upon child protection, schools and childcare at a variety of institutions worldwide.This book is an essential reference for students and scholars of Childhood Studies, and is also relevant to Sociology, Social Work, Education, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Geography.

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This article reconstructs multiple enactments of overweight bodies in residential child care by analysing ethnographic field notes. The account links in with current tendencies in childhood studies to reach a more material and relational understanding of children’s agency. Examining concepts of embodiment as discussed in science and technology studies and phenomenology, the article offers an approach to childhood studies which connects the corporeal and agency. It shows how different enactments of children’s bodies and food produce different forms of agency.

All of you are actively participating in the ongoing discussions that are taking place in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies through your own scholarly work and efforts to shape this dynamic field. What has brought you to this field and what do you find particularly interesting and fascinating in the work produced today in childhood studies? Feel free to refer to your own work and interests when discussing this. Afua My interest in childhood studies was rather accidental I would say. After completing my BA degree in History and Sociology I decided to embark on a Masters in Development Studies as I felt that was the career path I wanted to follow. This was a decision I made after spending 10 weeks in Ghana the previous summer undertaking fieldwork for my undergraduate dissertation. At this point I was not aware of any debates in childhood studies and I was not especially driven to study development due to any special interest in children's wellbeing or welfare in the South. However, early on during my Masters degree one of my modules focused on complex emergencies and the issue of children involved in armed conflicts was raised. For some reason, this topic struck a chord within me and I became somewhat fixated on this issue. What seemed to interest me in particular was how childhood was understood in societies where children were involved in armed conflict. I completed my MSc dissertation on the issue of child soldiers focusing on Sierra Leone and Liberia (Twum-Danso, 2000). However, the question of how childhood is constructed and understood in different societies remained on my mind and eventually I embarked on a PhD project which sought to explore constructions of childhood in Ghana and the implications for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Twum-Danso, 2008). It was when I started my PhD that I began to engage with the childhood studies literature (theoretical and methodological). It was at this point that I encountered the works of key thinkers of the time in childhood studies:

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