Beginning on 11 November and held over 5 weeks, this workshop and seminar series invites scholars to reconsider the role of institutions in the lives of children. While a robust body of work already exists regarding early modern children and the various institutions that managed them, the organisers note that significantly less attention has been paid to these spaces as the literal sites where children “grow up.”
Institutions were a defining feature of the early modern landscape for children across all social strata. Some were shuffled through foundling hospitals and wet nurses shortly after birth, while others spent their formative years in schools, reformatories, or workhouses. Because different institutions catered to specific life stages, a child might move through a succession of these environments over a lifetime—from infancy to the point where an institution might provide a dowry to facilitate their entry into adulthood.
This workshop explores childhood within institutional settings in the early modern world, with particular attention to experiences of care, discipline, and education across their life course.
Register your interest here; https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvWF7AogXT-61TTzIGF7RxlSXEGA152OaCYN0_Zo3Sp1-DuQ/viewform
Seminar Series: Online November 10-December 12 | Times TBC
Workshop: Thursday 26 November 2026 | 9:00 AM-5:00 PM (AEDT, UTC+11), Macquarie University
Contact: paula.plastic@mq.edu.au