Jessica Daminelli is a doctoral researcher in the PhD candidate on Children and Youth Studies at University College Dublin, funded by the Ad Astra Scholarship. With a background in Law and Political Sociology, her ongoing research explores children and young people’s agency and political participation in social spaces. Her interests also include early childhood education, gender studies, social inclusion and international development cooperation. Over the last two years she has worked as a consultant for monitoring and evaluation of social programmes and policies focused on children, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. She is a member of the Brazilian Monitoring and Evaluation Network Youth Group and, as a researcher, she has been affiliated to the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).