Seeking Contributing Authors for Edited Volume

We are recruiting contributors through Fall 2025. If you are interested in contributing, please email CUPInequalityandRights@gmail.com. See details and timeline below.

Goals for Edited Volume

Inequality and Children's Human Rights in Developmental Science is contracted be published by Cambridge University Press (C.U.P.) sometime in 2027.  Our edited volume invites contributors to revisit themes in their research from a children’s rights-based perspective by summarizing their work, refracting their research implications with respect to children’s rights, and looking forward to a more rights-based approach in their future research all through an ecological systems lens. Specifically, contributors will be asked to recast/reexamine prior work they have already completed, and we plan to work with contributing authors to scaffold this approach.

We are inviting scholars whose work addresses equity and justice. Of the invited contributors we are also striving to ensure representation of scholars who are at the early career stage and identify as women of color to advance the perspectives of underrepresented scholars in developmental research. We also intend for this edited work to outline gaps in children’s rights perspectives by bringing together critical scholars focusing on marginalized children in the Global North and South. Collaborations and co-authorship are encouraged to promote diversification of contributions. 

Included chapters will be divided into six sections focusing on: 

1. Individual child’s developmental processes that foster well-being and resilience in the face of inequity

2. Family as a socialization context whereby rights and rights-related issues are learned and negotiated 

3. Neighborhood/community’s role in creating affordances or barriers to the advancement of children’s rights

4. School/education system’s cultural tensions surrounding the implementation of children’s right to education 

5. Digital landscape’s opportunities and challenges for children’s enjoyment of their rights

6. Policies for applying developmental science to redress inequities

Timeline for Author-Initiated Contributions

(1) Email CUPInequalityandRights@gmail.com  to confirm interest by September 15, 2025

(2) By October 15, 2025 complete author response google form, which includes 200-word chapter summary and title; form will be emailed to interested contributors 

(3) Submit 500-word chapter abstract by November 15, 2025

(4) Editorial team will officially confirm with contributors by December 15, 2025 whether interested contributors will be invited to submit full first chapter draft*

(5) Invited contributors submit first complete draft of 6,000-word chapter (including references; double-spaced; APA style) by May 31, 2026

(6) Invited contributors submit revised chapters by November 30, 2026

*Note: Invitation to submit chapter does not guarantee publication in final edited volume.

Points of Contact

Editorial Team Email

Direct all communication regarding the volume to CUPInequalityandRights@gmail.com

Lead Editor

Dr. Juliana Karras, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University

& Partner of the Immigration Initiative at Harvard

Co-Editors

Dr. Martin D. Ruck, Developmental Psychology, The Graduate Center City University of New York

Dr. Isabelle M. Elisha, Associate Director, Psychology Program, CUNY School of Professional Studies

Editorial Assistants

Taleah Garza, B.S., Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, San Francisco State University  

Nada Mariam Habash, B.A., Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, San Francisco State University

Kaylahnie Palencia, B.A., Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, San Francisco State University  

Minyan Sun, B.A., Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, San Francisco State University

Reading List re: Children's Rights Research

Samples of Scholarship Describing or Applying Children's Rights Lens

Karras, J., Ruck, M. D., Peterson-Badali, M., & *Emuka, C. (2022). Being and becoming: Centering the morality of social responsibility through children's right to participate in society. In M. Killen & J. Smetana (Eds.) Handbook of Moral Development (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003047247-10

Karras, J., *Maker Castro, E., & *Emuka, C. (2022). Examining the Sociopolitical Development of Immigrant-Origin Youth During a Season of Social Unrest. Journal of Research on Adolescence, "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble": Dismantling Oppression Series as part of Special Series: Dismantling Systems of Racism and Oppression during Adolescence, 1-22. https://doi-org.jpllnet.sfsu.edu/10.1111/jora.12777 

Karras, J., Pells, K., Morrow, V., & Ruck, M. (2020). Poverty and human rights for children and youth through the lenses of psychology and sociology. In N. S. Rubin & R. Flores (Eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights (pp. 191-204). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108348607

Karras., J., Elisha, I., Ruck, M. D., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Willenberg, I. A. (2019). Does Situation Matter in Conceptions of Children's Rights? An Examination of South African Children's and Mothers' Perspectives. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 27(4), 631-659. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-02704002

Peterson-Badali M., Ruck M.D., Karras J., Huang S. (2019) Rights Knowledge, Reasoning, and Attitudes. In: Levesque R. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Adolescence (2nd ed.). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32132-5_172-2   

Elisha, I. M., Karras, J., & Ruck, M. D. (in press). The Civic Implications of Social Inequality: Centering Young People’s Perspectives on Resisting Oppression. To be published in J. L. Chin, Y. E. Garcia, & A. Blume (Eds.) The Psychology of Race and Ethnicity Series: Psychology of Inequity -Volume 3: Strategies and Solutions, Praeger 2023. Courtesy ABC-CLIO.