BIN Norden Conference 2027

Name: BIN Norden Conference 2027
Start: 2027-05-03T06:00:00
End: 2027-05-04T14:00:00

The Invisible, Hidden, and Emerging within Children’s Cultures
A multidisciplinary conference at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, May 3–4 2027
Post-conference workshop for doctoral students on May 5, 2027

Info

Event date

03.05.2027 09:00 - 04.05.2027 17:00

Event type

Congresses and conferences

Event language

English

Event accessibility

Accessible entrance to the event

Event address

Main Building (C) and Seminarium (S)
Seminaarinkatu 15
Jyväskylä 40100
Finland

Event organizer

Department of Education

Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies

Event payment

A paid event

The BIN Norden network and the University of Jyväskylä warmly welcome you to Jyväskylä in May 2027!

We look forward to two days of lively, interdisciplinary discussions on the invisible, the hidden and the emerging within children's cultures. The conference is followed by a post-conference workshop for PhD students.

For this conference, we invite scholars from different fields to discuss and reconsider topics, products, and practices that have been or still are invisible, hidden, and emerging within children’s cultures.

A selection of papers based on conference presentations will be published in a special issue of BUKS – Journal of Children’s and Youth Culture.

Important dates

Abstract submission open: September 14 – October 23, 2026

Notification of acceptance by: December 4, 2026

Early-bird registration closes: January 31, 2027

Speaker registration closes: February 28, 2027

Participant registration closes: April 11, 2027

Tatek Abebe, keynote: Music Activism as A Practice of Cultural and Political Reworlding
Abebe is Professor of Childhood Studies at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he is a founding member of the research group Critical Childhood and Youth Studies.

Pauliina Rautio, keynote: From fine art to Labubu-plushies and microwave pizza. Accommodating low theory in creating space for sustainability with young people, artists and researchers
Rautio is Professor of Biodiversity Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. She leads a research group AniMate within which conditions and forms of respectful coexistence between humans and other species

Shanti Sumartojo, keynote: Showing the small things: experiments with techniques that attune and attend
Sumartojo is Professor of Design Research in the Monash University Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture in Melbourne, Australia. She is a co-director of WonderLab, a practice-based research group focused on advancing scholarly insight and applied social impact through diverse projects and practices.

Organizing committee:

Marleena Mustola (PI),University of Jyväskylä, FIN
Susanne Ylönen, University of Jyväskylä, FIN
Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Kolding School of Design, DK
Niels-Peder Osmundsen Hjøllund, University College Copenhagen, DK
Malena Janson, University of Stockholm, SE
Yelyzaveta Hrechaniuk, University of Linköping, SE
Maria Grindheim, Western Norway University of Applied Science, NO

Contact: bin-norden2027@jyu.fi

In collaboration with:

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Call for papers

Call for Proposals

Abstract submission is now open! We accept proposals until 23 October 2026!

A plethora of things, actors, and ideas operate unseen or hidden from sight within cultures. This is especially true in children's cultures, which, in a market-driven, technological, and political sense, are largely managed by adults and built around implicit ideas of children and childhood.

hile some things are so ubiquitous that they hide in plain sight, behind a veil of banality, others may be obscured by marginalisation. Children’s cultures may preserve past practices, good and bad, and at the same time hold possibilities for imagining different futures. As children’s cultures do not operate outside of adult or mainstream cultures, the emerging and hidden dimensions of children’s culture also provide valuable insights into contemporary societies and their material, discursive, ideological, as well as political practices.

Discussions of the hidden aspects of children’s culture can make us rethink our everyday life, institutional practices, research methodologies, and the future. In the case of new methodologies, engagement with the less acknowledged may also further children’s participation and sense of belonging, for example, via participatory research designs. How can we, as researchers of children’s cultures and practitioners in the field, make room for new practices? How do we become aware of the hidden and the emerging within children’s cultures? How do new technologies and our reactions to them rearrange/reflect cultural hierarchies in relation to the desirabe/undesirable, the official/unofficial, and the adult/child?

A selection of papers based on conference presentations will be published in a special issue of BUKS – Journal of Children’s and Youth Culture.

The theme of the conference enables the exploration of

the prevalence of “hidden adults” within children’s cultures in the digital era, or, indeed, the hidden children within adult cultures (politics, institutions)
the promises and pitfalls of “giving voice” and making various voices matter
the remarkable in the unremarkable
new or less explored methodologies and research practices
the role of new technologies and venues that enable agency and challenge existing power hierarchies
what remains hidden within educational and art institutions
practices and products that fly under the radar
subtle and unrecognized children’s cultures
emerging ideologies, subcultures, ideas, and unknown futures
eye-opening case studies that exemplify how the abstract and the theoretical become concrete and visible

We welcome discussions of various materials, practices, institutions, and ideas, including but not limited to children’s literature, child art, children’s movies, fandoms, hobbies, pedagogies, and cultural traditions, as well as children’s views and their impact on adult-managed structures. The conference is open to researchers and practitioners from various fields with an interest in children’s culture.

Paper presentations

Paper sessions bring together presentations on ongoing or completed research projects. Every paper is allocated 20 minutes, consisting of a presentation of up to 15 minutes followed by approximately 5 minutes of discussion.

The maximum length of an abstract proposal is 250 words. The word limit applies only to the abstract text and does not include the title or author information.

Organised symposiums

A symposium is an organised session built around a shared theme. Submitting a symposium requires preparing an overarching abstract for the whole symposium, describing the theme, approach, and the presentations included.

A full symposium lasts 60 minutes. The organiser of the symposium determines the structure of the session and the allocation of time between presentations and discussion.

The overarching abstract should be a maximum of 250 words and outline the theme, approach, and included presentations, as well as how the symposium will be carried out. Each individual abstract within the symposium should also be no more than 250 words and must clearly indicate that it is part of a particular symposium.

Workshop

The workshop provides an opportunity for in-depth and hands-on exploration of an idea, theme, or specific methodology. The workshop duration is 60 minutes and may include an introduction, hands-on experimenting, and a discussion.

The maximum length of a workshop proposal is 250 words. The word limit applies only to the abstract text and does not include the title or author information.

The abstract submission is now open!

Only abstracts submitted via the link below will be considered. You will receive a confirmation email upon a successful submission.

Notifications of acceptance will be emailed to the abstract contact persons in early December 2026.

The last submission day is 23 October 2026.

Submit you abstract here

PhD course: “Playing with your analysis: New approaches to analysing your empirical material”.

When doing your PhD research, playing along is often not connected to the work in any way. This PhD course, “Playing with your analysis: Towards new approaches to analysing your empirical material”, will introduce playful approaches to analysing your empirical material. PhD candidates will be introduced to exercises inspired by music, poetry, and creative practices, and by the end of the PhD day, students will have several tools for analysing empirical material.

The course responsible person will be Helle Marie Skovbjerg, who is a professor at Kolding School of Design in Denmark and Professor II at HVL Bergen. Skovbjerg has worked with theoretical perspectives on play and is involved in several research projects about design, play and pedagogy, as well as being a member of the BIN-Norden steering group.

Registration for the workshop upon conference registration.

Organizers
Professor Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Lab for Play Design, Kolding School of Design Denmark
Marleena Mustola, Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä
Niels-Peder Osmundsen Hjøllund, University College Copenhagen
Susanne Ylönen, Department of Music, Art, and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä

Speakers

Keynote speakers

Title of the presentation: Music Activism as A Practice of Cultural and Political Reworlding

Tatek Abebe is a Professor of Childhood Studies at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he is a founding member of the research group Critical Childhood and Youth Studies. His research and teaching intersect childhood studies and development studies, focusing on how children and young people navigate and reshape the socio-cultural and political worlds they inhabit, with a particular emphasis on African contexts. He has conducted longitudinal, ethnographic, and participatory research on precarious childhoods, care and intergenerational dynamics, children’s rights, learning and laboring, and youth worldmaking. His recent work examines how young people engage with music as a form of resistance and imagination, exploring its role in struggles for political, cultural, and epistemic justice. Abebe is co-editor of Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research and the recently published Routledge Handbook of Childhood Studies and Global Development. 

Title of the presentation: From fine art to Labubu-plushies and microwave pizza. Accommodating low theory in creating space for sustainability with young people, artists and researchers

Pauliina Rautio is a Professor of Biodiversity Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. She leads a research group AniMate within which conditions and forms of respectful coexistence between humans and other species are studied together with young citizens, artists and other stakeholders. As a volunteer Pauliina runs a rehabilitation centre for injured wild birds.

Shanti Sumartojo is Professor of Design Research in the Monash University Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture in Melbourne, Australia. She is a co-director of WonderLab, a practice-based research group focused on advancing scholarly insight and applied social impact through diverse projects and practices. Shanti’s research approach has conceptual foundations in how things and places feel (atmospheres), where they are located (spatiality) and what connections they support (relationality). She is keenly interested in the ongoing development of creative and ethnographic research techniques and conducts practice-based research into systems change through imagination and creativity. All her work is collaborative, in and beyond academia, and is resourced by national research councils, philanthropic partners and public sector collaborators.

Title of the presentation: Showing the small things: experiments with techniques that attune and attend

A treasure, a misunderstanding, a secret, a fantasy, a problem - things in children’s worlds can remain hidden for many reasons, even if they are still present and important. But how can they become knowable as the focus of research, and how might we design methods that get closer to them? This talk shares an account of developing methodological experiments that attune to the ‘small things’. I will share how I have learned to pay attention carefully but sideways, by making research materials that hint rather than show, and how experiential, immersed research practices might continue to offer insight into children’s lives long after the research encounter is over.

By sharing practice, this talk is also a sensemaking attempt for techniques in attunement and attention that follow the action without documenting it, or not exactly. I will share examples of projects where, even as we sought to purposefully notice what was emerging, we had to occlude the main focus of the project: the children themselves. We did not plan the work this way; rather, the experiments were a response to practical contingencies that demanded children’s faces and bodies be kept out of view. Shaped by forces outside our control, our experiments yielded partial understandings that emerged only gradually, subject to the invisible pull and push of disciplines, practices and perspectives.

I will also reflect on emergence in research on children’s worlds, sharing how we sought to reflect the playfulness of the child-focused setting by remaining playful in how we designed the research approach itself. I want to show how, by using video, audio, photography, design artefacts and our own bodies, researchers can attend and attune to the small things, and thus come closer to understanding children’s experiences of their worlds.

Registration

Conference registration

All conference participants (including presenters) are required to register and pay a registration fee. The fee covers the conference programme, coffee breaks and Welcome reception. Note that lunches are not included in the registration fee.

The registration will open in December 2026.

Category	Early Bird rate, until 21 January 2027	Normal rate, until 11 April 2027
Regular participants	€ 170	€ 220
PhD students*	€ 110	€ 110
JYU staff (incl. PhD students), internally invoiced	€ 110	€ 130

*Proof of student status might be asked at the onsite registration.

Venue

Welcome to the University of Jyväskylä!

The international BIN Norden 2027 will take place at the University of Jyväskylä. Conference sessions and events will be hosted in two central venues:

The University Main Building (C Builidng), Seminaarinkatu 15, 40100 Jyväskylä
Seminarium (S building), Seminaarinkatu 15, 40100 Jyväskylä

Seminaarinmäki, where both Main Building (C)and Seminarium (S) are located, offers a unique cultural and natural setting, showcasing over a century of Finnish architectural heritage. The campus is especially renowned for its many iconic buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, attracting visitors from around the world.

Seminaarinmäki campus is part of Aalto Works which recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Read more: Alvar Aalto and Unesco World Heritage - Alvar Aalto Foundation | Alvar Aalto -säätiö

The University’s Seminaarinmäki campus and its commitment to equal education were also previously awarded the European Heritage Label in 2022, making it the first institution in Finland to receive this recognition.

The European Heritage Label is awarded to sites located within the European Union that are significant in terms of European history, culture, and integration

The University of Jyväskylä campuses use the eParking parking application. For more information about parking spaces on our campuses, parking prices and instructions on how to use the app, please visit our parking page. The nearest car park, P-Cygnaeus, is located at Vapaudenkatu 35. In addition to the car parks, there are plenty of street parking spaces managed by the City of Jyväskylä near our campuses.

By plane: 

The international flights fly to Helsinki International Airport. You can continue your trip from there by train or bus or fly directly to Jyväskylä. Jyväskylä Airport is located in Tikkakoski which is about 23 km from Jyväskylä city centre. However, take note that the flights to Jyväskylä Tikkakoski Airport are infrequent and there is no public transport from the airport to the city centre. It is possible to arrange an airport pick up by taxi booked in advance (Jyväskylä area taxi service, tel. +358 100 6900). The taxi from Tikkakoski airport to the city centre costs approximately 60 euros (credit card accepted).

By train:

Jyväskylä is accessible by train. There is a train connection from Helsinki airport to Jyväskylä (via Tikkurila station). The travel time from Helsinki is around 3,5 hours (shortest way via Tampere). We advise you to buy the ticket from the VR website https://www.vr.fi/en. You can also purchase tickets at the VR ticket vending machines or counters at the train station. It's recommended to book your tickets in advance to secure the best prices and seat options.

By bus:

If you prefer travelling to Jyväskylä by bus, you can either use Matkahuolto or Onnibus services. Note that Onnibus is faster and cheaper, but the ticket should be bought beforehand from the www.onnibus.com. Most of their buses depart directly from Helsinki airport to Jyväskylä.

Accommodation

Accommodation options

Local organizers have arranged pre-reservations and special rates exclusively for conference participants, and we warmly encourage you to explore the hotels listed below and take advantage of these offers. Please note the booking codes and deadlines for each hotel to ensure availability. Conference participants are welcome to arrange their own accommodation to best suit their needs, with reservations made directly with the hotels, and special rates available for a limited time.

Note: The conference dates have been pre-reserved at the listed hotels. When searching for accommodation, the hotels may appear fully booked at first. To view available rooms, please enter the official conference booking code. Once the code is applied, the reserved rooms will become visible and available for booking.

FINLANDIA HOTELLI ALBA
Address: Ahlmaninkatu 4
40100 Jyväskylä
Email: info@hotellialba.fi
Phone: +358 14 636311

Finlandia Hotel Alba welcomes participants to stay by the scenic Jyväsjärvi waterfront in Mattilanniemi from May 2–5, 2027 with the following rates:

€109.00 Standard single room (h1) / night
€130.00 Standard double room (h2) / night
€100.00 Economy single room (h1) / night
€120.00 Superior single room (h1) / night
€168.00 Junior Suite with sauna, single occupancy (h1) / night
€190.00 Junior Suite with sauna, double occupancy (h2) / night

The rates include a generous buffet breakfast and access to the guest sauna during sauna hours. Free parking and Wi-Fi are also available for our guests.

Reservations should be made directly with the hotel using the booking code BIN2027:

Email: info@hotellialba.fi
Phone: +358 14 636311
Finlandia Hotel Alba — booking campaign code: BIN2027

The rates are valid for the dates mentioned above. If you would like to book accommodation outside these dates, please contact info@hotellialba.fi.

Reservations may be cancelled free of charge until 4:00 PM on the day of arrival, and payment is made at the hotel. Invoicing is available only by prior agreement. Rooms are available from 2:00 PM onwards.

GREEN STAR HOTEL
Address: Heikinkatu 3
40100 Jyväskylä, Finland
Email: jyvaskyla@greenstar.fi
Phone: +358 10 423 9391

GreenStar Hotel Jyväskylä welcomes conference participants to enjoy comfortable, affordable, and environmentally friendly accommodation in the city centre, just a short distance from the University and key attractions on 2-5 May 2027, with the following accommodation options:

€85 Single Room (1 person) / night
€97 Twin Room (2 people) / night
€109 Triple Room (3 people) / night

The prices include a generous buffet breakfast, VAT, and complimentary Wi-Fi.

Website: www.greenstar.fi – Use the campaign code BIN2027 when booking online, by email or by phone.

BIN Norden Conference 2027

The BIN Norden network and the University of Jyväskylä warmly welcome you to Jyväskylä in May 2027!

Important dates

Organizing committee:

In collaboration with:

Add to calendar

Call for Proposals

Theme

Presentation formats

Submit your abstract

Post conference PhD workshop 5 May 2027

Keynote speakers

Professor Shanti Sumartojo, Australia

Conference registration

Welcome to the University of Jyväskylä!

Parking

How to get to Jyväskylä

Cookie consent

Cookie consent

Accommodation options

Jyväskylä region