Expert to Discuss War Effects on Children

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Posted on February 14, 2018

Alice Jackson

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An internationally recognized expert on the effects of war on children will speak at the University of South Alabama on Feb. 20 as a guest of the USA Center for the Study of War and Memory.

Dr. Martin Parsons will speak on “Why Bother…They Are Only Children: Children in Twentieth-Century Conflict” at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Marx Library.

Parsons, founder and former director of the Research Centre for Evacuee and War Child Studies at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, is known for his work on the evacuation of civilians from British urban centers during World War II, an event remembered today in Great Britain simply as the “Evacuation.” His books include “I’ll Take That One,” the definitive history of the British evacuation, and “War Child: Children in Conflict,” which examines the plight of children in war zones around the world from the 1930s through the early twenty-first century. An active public historian, he has also been involved in many award-winning British radio and television projects.

Dr. Steven Trout, co-director of the Center for the Study of War and Memory, said “Parson’s work focuses on an all-too-forgotten dimension of military violence — its traumatic impact on children. One of the reasons for this forgetting, as his lecture will show, has to do with the kinds of stories that cultures tell about war, stories that sadly leave little room for the acknowledgement of civilian suffering.”

Now retired, Parsons previously taught history at the University of Reading and the University of Lodz in Poland. He continues today at the University of Reading as a Research Fellow and an Honorary Life Fellow.

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