Week 8 - Open Topic

A lot of the topics that I find myself interested in are related to youth or children, and after learning a bit more about the ethics protocols related to research I am interested in finding out about what ethical ways there are for working with children, since they are considered a vulnerable population. I am also very interested in exploring methods of visual data, and thus I think that examining drawings by children is an extremely interesting and valuable research tool.
My boyfriend found a book at a thrift store a few years ago that presented fascinating drawings created by children held in Nazi concentration camps. There were frank depictions of death and suffering, but also hallmarks of typical children's drawings such as flowers and rainbows. I always enjoy children's art, but these were especially fascinating because of the context they were created in.
Clearly, all the children who created the drawings were in a stressful and vulnerable situation at the time the drawings were created, and they would now also be adults or even deceased, so the value in this book is studying the art works as artifacts. Thus the question still remains about how to conduct research with children in the present.

(via: https://kurioso.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/everyone-was-hungry.jpg)