Roger Hart

Roger A. Hart (born c. 1950) is a child-rights academic, and former Professor of Psychology and Geography at the City University of New York and co-director of the Children's Environments Research Group.

Education
Hart received a B.A. in geography from the University of Hull in England in 1968 and undertook a Masters and PhD in geography at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Teaching
Hart was editor of Childhood City Quarterly for ten years and is on the advisory boards of Child magazine, the Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, and the Children’s Garden Programs of the American Horticultural Society. He has also taught at UCLA and the Université de Montréal. Roger Hart is the former director of the Center for Human Environments and the Children’s Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center.

Research
Hart's research has focused on understanding the everyday lives of children and youth and, to this end, he has designed many participatory methodologies for working with young people. He has collaborated with others in the application of theory and research to the planning and design of children's environments and to environmental education.

In recent years, his work has been more broadly concerned with finding ways to foster the participation of disadvantaged children in fulfilling their rights. To this end, he has collaborated in numerous countries with international non-governmental agencies. With UNICEF, he has written 2 books on children's participation and co-authored “Cities for Children: Children’s Rights, Poverty and Urban Management”. With the Save the Children Alliance, he has written “The Children’s Clubs of Nepal: A Democratic Experiment” and the video “Mirrors of Ourselves: Tools of Democratic Self Reflection for Groups of Children and Youth”.