Early Childhood
Newsletter December 2023
Dear Early Childhood community members,
We hope you are all getting ready for the holidays. To send you off on a high note we want to share some exciting news from the Early Childhood community.
Funding application
Last month we have granted a total of €36.500,- to three interdisciplinary that were submitted to us. All projects are introduced in the ‘spotlight’ section of this newsletter and will be discussed during the next network lunch (December 15th, 13:00 – 14:00).
Do you also have an idea for a project related to the values of the Early Childhood community? You can obtain support to set up various projects, including an expansion of your current research, a new collaboration you wish to undertake, a public engagement activity and more.
Click here to read about the criteria for applying.
SAVE THE DATE: Interdisciplinary grant application network lunch
Together with the Sound Start Symposium, the Early Childhood community is organizing a network lunch for all researchers and research support staff that are interested in interdisciplinary grant application. We will present the projects that got awarded a grant in the past round and we will discuss how you can incorporate an interdisciplinary aspect in your research.
The network lunch will be held on Friday December 15th from 13:00 until 14:00 in the Johanna Westerdijkkamer in the Academiegebouw (Domplein 29, Utrecht).
For more information, see our invitation.
If you want to participate, please fill out the registration form.
SAVE THE DATE: Summer school “Early Childhood”
Coming summer, the Early Childhood community is organizing a summer school. During the summer school, participants will be updated on the state-of-the-art knowledge and methods in the field of Early Childhood research. Besides theoretical lectures, every day will comprise an in-depth workshop about frequently used techniques.
For more information, see the Early Childhood summer school course.
Spotlight
Do you also want to nominate someone (or maybe yourself) for our newsletter spotlight, send your story to early.childhood@uu.nl.
Interdisciplinary collaborations – Granted funding
Last month we have granted a total of €36.500,- to three interdisciplinary that were submitted to us. We selected two research projects and one public engagement activity.
The first research project, by Gaby van den Hurk and Marije van Meegen, involved an extension of the RADAR study with behavioral observations of social behavior and parenting around 2 ½ years. They will use these data to examine early childhood social skills and to assess the role of parent-child interaction quality in the development of early social functioning. The data they will acquire and annotate will be made available for other researchers and the newly developed procedures of the home visits will be shared as well.
The second research project, by Isabelle van der Linden and Fieke Terstappen, involved an extension of the PROActive and SMART-Youth cohorts, by including infants that were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in these cohorts. This collaboration will strengthen the bonds between the departments of pediatric cardiology, neonatology, social pediatrics of the Wilhelmina Childrens Hospital and the department of pedagogy of Utrecht University. Furthermore, all acquired data will be in alignment with the FAIR principles.
Finally, we support a symposium organized by Karen de Bijl-Marcus. The symposium will discuss different ways in which neonatal care may be improved. During the symposium both the clinical and parent perspective will be discussed. The symposium is open for health care practitioners, researchers, policymakers and the general public.
Public engagement – Two blogs form our community
One blog form the blog workshop is published on the Early Years Blog platform. The blog “Wanneer eetproblemen een probleem worden” (When eating problems become a problem) by Madelon Meijer-Hoogeveen was published on October 16th.
On December 22nd a blog by Martijn van Herwijnen about the secrets of breastmilk will be published. So, if you’re curious what the image with the grey circles is all about, don’t hesitate to read his blog and find out!
Events – FAIR data science café
November 28th, the Early Childhood community and the Thriving and Healthy Youth community have organized a FAIR data science café. During the meeting we discussed our data management plans, while enjoying a nice borrel. Participants were invited to draw out their data workflow (from recruiting participants to publishing your results). After fifteen minutes of focused flowcharting, we discussed the workflows and joined forces to fill in the gaps and answer questions that arose.
Agenda
The following activities might be interesting for you in the coming months:
13 December 2023 Visit of Early Childhood community to neonatology department
15 December 2023 Networklunch – Grant writing in a multidisciplinary team
21 March 2024 Visit of DoY communities to ILS colloquium
21 March 2024 Symposium Karen de Bijl-Marcus “Baby steps forward on the pathway towards improvement of neonatal care”
19-23 August 2024 Summer school ‘Early Chidhood’