November 2025: Retrospective account of Amandine’s internship
As part of her first year of Master’s in Humanities at the University of New Caledonia (UNC), Amandine Aiglehoux-Bornet completed an eight-week internship at IRD in Nouméa, between May and July 2025. She worked on New Caledonian children’s views of the land-sea continuum and impacts of climate change. She was particularly interested in SOCPacific2R’s transdisciplinary protocol (which she contributed to develop a few months before) based on children’s drawings and involving some children as co-researchers.
During her internship, Amandine returned to three of the four school classes involved in the project in March 2025. In each class, she presented the drawings made by children from the other schools as well as the video made in March by the child co-researchers for a climate-related event at SPC (“Pacifique en transition – Regards croisés sur le climat”). Amandine also conducted collective interviews, in groups of three or four children, to gather their memories and feelings several weeks after the project. She also did six interviews with education staff (teachers, school principals, educational advisors) to collect their opinions on the research protocol based on children’s drawings, as well as on the benefits it had for the children who took part as either participants or co-researchers.
What stood out from these interviews (with both children and adults) was that involving children as co-researchers made them feel heard and deeply engaged in the research work. They appreciated collaborating with the team on a specific objective and topic that was meaningful to them. The other children enjoyed participating in a drawing activity in answer to a question defined by children of the same age, and that they therefore understood well. This is discussed in greater details in Amandine’s report, entitled “Now we are co-researchers! Or the integration of children in a social science research protocol”, and successfully defended in September 2025 at the University of New Caledonia.
Amandine also participated in the Caledonian Climate Change Forum, which took place on the 22nd of July at the University of New Caledonia and which was dedicated to the youth. On this occasion, she created with the child co-researchers a short video recounting their involvement in the research protocol. This video was shown at the opening of the round table on youth engagement in the face of climate change. Two posters were also created and displayed during the forum. Through her internship, Amandine thus contributed to establish spaces for dialogue around children’s drawings between children from different schools, and between children and researchers, but also between children and the general public.
