The Project
This webpage is a harvest from a PhD research titled "Social Spaces of Child Play: Urban Discourses, Identities, Practices and Imaginaries". It pays particular attention to slum-dwelling children's use of spaces. This research also foregrounds the importance of children as co-creators of geographical knowledge. This work focuses on how children, for, by, and among themselves, create meaning about their everyday play spaces, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under conditions of spatial constraints, children's environment within their immediate spaces give the preconditions on how they experience play, which shapes how they make sense of their spaces. The focus is on what children's everyday spaces affords them through the tapestry of play encounters during the pandemic. Children have shared spaces and negotiated their presence in common spaces of informalities. However, that children share spaces does not necessarily mean engendering a common viewpoint. Instead, children deal with negotiating the art of proximity and distance in their common space. As such, this work captures children's sense-making of their everyday play environments and relations. It is then important to ask how children understand both their limits and opportunities within the informalities they play at, together with the discourses they use, identities they shape, and practices they act on.
The Researcher
I am Aireen Grace Andal, a storyteller. I have a PhD in Social Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia, and Social Philosophy at Ural Federal University, Russia. My research pays particular attention to children's use of urban spaces and the importance of children as co-creators of knowledge in urbanity. I am also a research fellow at the Space for Engagement and Epistemic Diversity (SEED) (University of Melbourne) and at the Centre of Global Urbanism (Ural Federal University). Majority of my academic engagements involve children's voices on the urban spaces they occupy, with emphasis on slum-dwelling communities. My recent publications include topics in the fields of children's geographies, childhood studies, and urban and regional studies, while serving as a reviewer of manuscripts related to global childhood studies. I am a scholar for and with children and their spaces. My research mission is devoted to making children's voices heard, their insights acknowledged, and their lives seen—matters that are hitherto often dismissed.
email: aireengrace.andal@outlook.com
Relevant Publications
Andal, A. G. (2023). Children and urban vitalism amidst transitions: Perspectives from slum-dwelling children in the Philippines. Cities, 135, 104221 [online first] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275123000331
Andal, A. G. (2023). Planning and Urban Imaginaries: A Reflection on Speculative Planning with Slum-Dwelling Children in the Philippines. In McClymont, K. & McNally, D. (eds) Interface: Planning, Art, and Aesthetics, Planning Theory & Practice, 24(3), 415-419, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2230046
Andal, A. G. (2023). Re-imagining "care": Reflections from digital fieldwork with slum-dwelling children in the Philippines. Digital Geography and Society, 5(100069) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2023.100069
Andal, A. G. (2023). Doing Digital Children's Geographies, Imperfectly: Methodological Reflections on a Child-led Digital Tour in a Slum Neighbourhood in the Philippines. In Osrborne, T. & Jones, P. (eds). A Research Agenda for Digital Geographies (pp. 111-123). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802200607.00018
Andal, A. G. (2023). Nomadic boat-dwelling children of Southeast Asia: Discourses on the Sama-Bajau children and implications on decentring child migration studies. Children & Society https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/chso.12686
Andal, A. G. (2023). Negotiating informalities of leisure: Leisure among slum-dwelling children amidst the Coronavirus pandemic in the Philippines. In Mukherjee, U. (ed) Childhoods & Leisure: Cross-Cultural and Inter-Disciplinary Dialogues (pp. 215–234). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33789-5_9
Andal, A. G. (2023). Green Spaces and Slum-dwelling Children's Resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic Lockdown in the Philippines. In Colucci, A. et al (eds) Envisioning Resilient Cities for a Post-pandemic One Health Future (pp. 71-80) . Pavia: REesilienceLAB. https://re.public.polimi.it/handle/11311/1239137
Andal, A. G. (2023). Children's spaces in pages: Examining spatiality in COVID-19-themed children's books. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 23(1), 73–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687984221118981
Andal, A. G. (2022). Soundscapes of Informalities. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 9(1), 486-496. https://doi/full/10.1080/21681376.2022.2091472
Andal, A. G. (2022). Approaches to Season-Responsive Urban Spaces for Children: Lessons and Challenges in Winter Cities. In Chatterjee, U., Biswas, A., Mukherjee, J., & Majumdar, S. (Eds.) Advances in urbanism, smart cities, and sustainability (First edition) (pp. 111–122). Boca Raton: CRC Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1201/9781003126195-8
Andal, A. G. (2022). Greening in the Margins: Children's Perception on the Sustainability of Urban Gardening in Informal Settlements in San Jose del Monte City, Philippines. In: Ademović N., Mujčić E., Akšamija Z., Kevrić J., Avdaković S., Volić I. (Eds) Advanced Technologies, Systems, and Applications VI. IAT 2021. (pp. 721-734). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90055-7_58
Andal, A. G. (2021). Situating Children's Lives in Coastal Cities: Prospects and Challenges in Urban Planning in Five Southeast Asian Cities. Regional Science Policy & Practice 14(2), 279-292. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsp3.12485
Andal, A. G. (2021). Children's Spaces in Coastal Cities: Challenges to Conventional Urban Understandings and Prospects for Child-friendly Blue Urbanism. Children's Geographies, 20(5), 688–700. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.1962515
Andal, A. G. (2021). The State of Journals on Children and Childhood Studies: Insights And Challenges From A Citation Analysis. Childhood 28(3), 444–458. https://doi.org/10.1177/09075682211032719
Andal, A. G. (2021). Reimagining Children's Spaces in the Urban Nightlife: Lessons and Challenges from the Literature. In: Abeer, E., Abusaada, H., & Rodwell, D. (eds) Transforming Urban Nightlife and the Development of Smart Public Spaces (pp. 73-93). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7004-3.ch006
Andal, A. G. (2020). Rethinking Dialogue Practices among Children: Philosophy for Children and Phenomenology as Approach towards Conflict Resolution in a Diverse Classroom. Journal of Dialogue Studies 8, 134–151. https://doi.org/10.55207/vzna6175
Andal, A. G. (2020) Discourses of Educational Rights in Philosophy for Children: On the Theoretical and Practical Merits of Philosophical Education for Children. AVANT. Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 11(2). https://doi.org/10.26913/AVANT.2020.02.04
Andal, A. G. (2019) The Strongman as a Helicopter Parent: Situating Filipino Young People Within the War on Drugs of the Duterte Administration. Youth Voice Journal 9. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Aireen-Grace-Andal-ebook/dp/B082DL9TXW
Andal, A. G. (2019) Development Unlearned: (Un)Reading Development Literature Between-the-Lines, Open Journal for Sociological Studies, 3(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojss.0301.01001a
Andal, A. G. (2019) "Unmapping" the Ural Playscapes: An Analysis of Playgrounds and Child Play under the Post-Soviet Urban Transition of Yekaterinburg, Russia. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Science Research, 11(1), 5-30. https://doi.org/10.25285/2078-1938-2019-11-1-5-30
Other publications
Bojovic, M., Frost, E., Andal, A. G. & Simon, H. (2024). Read, write, retreat: A collaborative reflection on shared writing retreat experiences among PhD candidates. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2024.2333288
Andal, A. G. (2023). Whose autonomy, whose interests? A donor‐focused analysis of surrogacy and egg donation from the global South. Developing World Bioethics, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/dewb.12401105
Andal, A. G. (2023). BRICS and the Contemporary Body Politic: Examining a Decade of Normativities in the BRICS Summit Declarations. In Bolgov, R., Atnashev, V., Gladkiy, Y. Leete, A., Tsyb, A., Pogodin, S, & Znamenski, A. (eds) Proceedings of Topical Issues in International Political Geography 2021 (pp. 102–116). Cham: Springer Geography. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20620-7_10
Andal, A. G. (2022). Coastal Bodies and Childhood Memories: Exploring Baby Boomers' Gendered Memories of the Waterfront in Virac, Catanduanes. Changing Societies and Personalities, 6(2), 296–314. https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2022.6.2.176
Andal, A.G., PraveenKumar, S., Andal, E.G., Qasim. M.A., & Velkin, V.I. (2022). Perspectives on the Barriers to Nuclear Power Generation in the Philippines: Prospects for Directions in Energy Research in the Global South. Inventions, 7(3), 53. https://doi.org/10.3390/inventions7030053
Andal, A. G., & Muratshina, K. (2022). Adjunct Rather Than Alternative in Global Governance: An Examination of BRICS as an International Bloc through the Perception of its Members. Social Science Information, 61(1), 77–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/05390184211068012
Polyakova, I. & Andal, A. G. (2022) Влияние религиозных взглядов на донорство в репродукции: тенденции и мировой опыт (The Impact of Religious Beliefs on Reproductive Donation: Global and National Trends), Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov'v Rossii i za rubezhom, 40(4), 219–241. https://doi.org/10.22394/2073-7203-2022-40-4-219-241
Andal, A. G. (2021). The Maternal Body as a Space: Examining the Visuality of Marian Pregnancy in Late Medieval Europe. Open Theology 7(1), 256-270. https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0163
Andal, A. G., & Wu, S. (2021). Doctoral Journey During Covid-19: Reflections From a Collaborative Autoethnography. International Journal of Doctoral Studies 16, 633-656. https://doi.org/10.28945/4871
Symaniuk, E., Polyakova, I. & Andal, A. G. (2020). Motivation of Altruistic Sperm Donors Participating in Assisted Reproduction in Russian Federation. Сибирский психологический журнал 78, 34-54. DOI: 10.17223/17267080/78/3
Andal A.G. (2020) Revisiting International Law's Discussion on the Moral Status of the Fetus. In: Bolgov R., Atnashev V., Gladkiy Y., Leete A., Tsyb A., Pogodin S. (eds) Proceedings of Topical Issues in International Political Geography (pp. 327-338). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58263-0_29
Muratshina K. and Andal A.G. (2020) China's Infrastructural Expansion in Southeast Asia. In: Bolgov R., Atnashev V., Gladkiy Y., Leete A., Tsyb A., Pogodin S. (eds) Proceedings of Topical Issues in International Political Geography. Springer Geography (pp. 292-302). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58263-0_26
Andal, A. G. (2020). Politics of Birth Places: Examining the Ethics of Birth Place Choices. Jahr – European Journal of Bioethics, 11(1), 61 – 82. https://doi.org/10.21860/j.11.1.3
Andal, A. G. (2020). Flesh of the Unborn: On the Political Philosophy of the Unborn, Changing Societies & Personalities, 4(1), 53–67. https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2020.4.1.089
Andal, A. G. (2019). Self-Shooting Uterus-Owners: Examining the Selfies of Pregnant Transmen within the Politics of Human Reproduction, Changing Societies & Personalities, 3(1), 36-51. https://doi.org/10.15826/csp.2019.3.1.059
Andal, A. G. (2019) Whose Discourse, Whose Ear? Harmony in Dialogic Pedagogy amidst the Post-Truth Noise, Dialogic Pedagogy Journal, 7, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2019.276
Andal, A. G. (2018). Decanonized Reading: Intellectual Humility and Mindfulness in Reading Canonical Philosophical Writings. Changing Societies & Personalities. 2(1), 56-74. https://dx.doi.org/10.15826/csp.2018.2.1.030