The DCU School of History and Geography hosted this conference which explored the history of children and childhood (including adolescence) in Ireland and beyond from the late sixteenth century onward. The conference’s name references Centuries of Childhood, the title of the 1962 English translation of Philippe Ariès’s L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, the book that helped to launch the history of children and childhood as an academic discipline. This event was the latest initiative at the DCU St Patrick’s Campus to foster this area of historical enquiry, providing a fresh forum for researchers to present their work. The conference featured papers by 30 speakers from universities in Ireland, Britain, Germany and India as well as a plenary lecture by Professor James Kelly (DCU) entitled ‘Chimney sweeping, corporal punishment and violence against children: Ireland, 1700-1870’.