Introduction: Intergenerational Transmissions: Cultivating Children's Agency?

anniversary of the IDS Bulletin would have reviewed the last four decades of publications and re-presented their most influential messages. The IDS Bulletin is, indeed, reflective for it considers and builds on some of the core areas of research and policy advocacy that have, over the years, become central to the work of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS): inequalities, poverty, power, social protection, transformational education, HIV/AIDS, gender, and climate change. However, the IDS Bulletin is, perhaps, best described as forward-looking, since it applies these issues to studies of the future, specifically the future of our children. It is forward-looking, too, in documenting emerging work – on and with children – that is occurring across the disciplines within IDS, as well as select strands of comparable work that are being developed outside the Institute. The IDS Bulletin explores a common theme that links these multidisciplinary areas of research: the question of intergenerational transmissions (IGTs) and, specifically, whether and how states, societies, development actors and parents, among others, are building the conditions under which children can imagine and realise better futures.