Its Monday and I am getting back to work after a few days spent in Barcelona attending the The Second International Conference on Children, Youth & Families in Universitat AutÒnoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
First off, I want to say thank you to the organizers, who did an amazing job. The conference ran smoothly, was planned in a very innovative way and had a very diverse and fascinating topic base.
The University itself has a very interseting history…
The Autonomous University of Barcelona was officially created by legislative decree on June 6, 1968. Previously, during the Second Spanish Republic, there had been plans for constituting a second university in Barcelona, but due to the Civil War and the following years of poverty under the early dictatorship did not allow these plans to become a reality until that year. On July 27, a disposition to the decree is added, stating the creation of the Faculty of Letters, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Economical Sciences. Around ten weeks later, on October 6, the first course of the Faculty of Letters is inaugurated at Sant Cugat del Vallès Monastery. During the same month, the Faculty of Medicine is set at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona. In 1969, an agreement is signed for the acquisition of the terrains where the University Campus is nowadays. During that year too, the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Economical Sciences start running. During the following three years, several Faculties and Professional Schools are created, and the construction works at the Campus terrains take place. At the end of this period, most existing Faculties and Schools are settled in the campus. At the end of the dictatorship in 1976, the University introduces a plan to create a model of democratic, independent university, described in a document known as Bellaterra Manifesto, which includes a declaration of principles. Two years later, after the approval of the Catalan Statute, the University Council agrees to recourse to the Generalitat de Catalunya.
Furthermore, the architecture of the campus reflects the dissident past, with a protective design, which meant that if the police attacked the campus there were escape routes and barricadable locations. Unfortunately, most universities I have visited are effectively attacked by other, more covert, means.
The conference was organized into 8 workshops a day, which ran in 4 pairs. In each workshop there were 4 speakers who delivered their pieces and when everyone was finished a discussion took place. Particularly in the workshop I was involved in this proved highly effective and a good discussion involving the whole panel (who all came from as diverse positions as possible) and most of the attendees got involved.
The conference was also refreshing because people had differing ideas about what was important in research, method and scope, but everyone came from the position that children were important and should be protected regardless of what we were researching. In effect the whole conference was grounded in an attitude of care, rather than of academic correctness. Interestingly, men were vastly under represented.
Barcelona is a beautiful city. A living city. I look forward to visiting again!
