Kristen is a PhD student at the University of Bath with funding from the UKRI/ ESRC. Her work is inspired by her own childhood growing up in a settler colonial community in the Caribbean, then later studying Arabic and spending 15 years working with child protection agencies in international development and humanitarian contexts. Using action-oriented and participatory approaches, Kristen has worked with children and young people from around the world, including those who have lived through displacement, violence and contact with justice systems, many of whom seek to leverage their lived experience to create change and claim their rights. She has coordinated several international child rights advocacy initiatives, including the child participation component of the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty and #CovidUnder19. Critically reflecting on these experiences, her research explores the encounter between feminist, decolonial theory and dominant paradigms of rights-based child participation in international child protection.