About

The Age of Inquiry project is mapping inquiries into historical child abuse that have proliferated since the 1990s. It aims to develop a publicly available web resource containing information on inquiries across the globe.

It focuses in particular on investigations into ‘institutional child abuse’, which encompasses a range of settings, typically outside the family but including arrangements such as foster care.

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the establishment of historical abuse inquiries internationally. However, there remains limited knowledge of their scope and geographical spread.

This resource is a work in progress. It aims to extend understandings of inquiries in the present and recent past by documenting and categorizing their key features. The inquiries currently listed are being progressively updated as the research progresses.

Inquiries are added by region. During the first phase of the project, we have focused on Australia, the UK and Europe.

Major updates are published as new editions. The current (second) edition was published in 2020.

In the future we hope to add data on state apologies.

The project brings together a team of scholars from Australia and Europe and actively encourages contributions from other researchers with expertise in this field.

We welcome feedback on the project.

Please contact us if you:

• identify inquiries not yet listed;
• are interested in contributing data on a particular inquiry;
• would like more information about the project; and/or
• wish to provide feedback on the inquiries included thus far.

You can find our contact details here.