Forager Child Studies Group

I am a co-founder of the Forager Child Studies, an interdisciplinary research group that studies the pasts, presents, and futures of hunter-gatherer children and childhood (producing over ten peer-reviewed papers since 2016). Together with Sheina Lew-Levy and other members of the FCS group, we produced several review papers on how forager children learn subsistence skills (Lew-Levy et al. 2017) and social skills and gender norms (Lew-Levy et al. 2018) as well as on children engagement with school education (Ninkova et al. accepted) and on hunter-gatherer children in archaeology (Milks et al. 2021). 

Read more on our work in our group website (https://foragerchildstudies.wixsite.com/home)

We are currently working on five research tracks.

(1) Children’s work and play:  In a cross-cultural analysis made up of secondary data, this project seeks to explore how ecological and cultural factors influence children’s participation in play and work activities across the lifespan.

(2) Children in the archeological record: Using a systematic protocol, this project examines how children’s activities are identified in the archeological record.

(3) Forager children’s experience in school:  Using eHRAF and existing literature, we are collaborating with HG-EDU to investigate forager children’s experiences in schools.

(4) Children's use of tools: Funded by PLAYTrack seeds, this project uses eHRAF to examine how children use tools in play and work.

(5) Children's foraging returns: Using a systematic protocol, this project examines cross-cultural variation and regularity in children's reported foraging returns.