Childhood and education for eco-social justice
Childhoodnature is a new posthuman concept which reframes children's relationships with nature and the natural environment. This reframing rejects the binary divide between children (people) and nature, introducing a more expansive notion where children are recognised as natural beings themselves, entangled in the interconnected web of life, nonhuman and human.
Childhoodnature challenges us to respond in new ways to human activity, which is contributing to sustained, destructive impact on the planet. Such new responses speak to the groundswell of child and youth engagement in global environment change politics and informs how education has a key role to play in response to the current planetary emergency.
We would be interested in receiving PhD proposals which explore contemporary childhoodnature using the concept of Relational Becoming which sees relations across the nonhuman-human world as a fundamental orientation for education from the early years to adulthood. How do children become relational with nature and the human, non-human and materials worlds? How does the child's educational, sociocultural and environmental context affect them in becoming relational? How can these new understandings inform education which promotes the knowledge, skills, and values needed for a healthier, fairer, more sustainable way of life?
The methodological approach will decentre humans and, instead, focus on human-nonhuman emergent ecologies, relations and events - things which matter deeply on the personal and relational levels as initiators for change, but which are too often ignored in traditional research approaches and accounts. We seek applicants who are interested in developing research practices which engage emotions, creativity and materiality (such as arts-based and co-creation approaches) and produce new openings for social, educational and environmental justice.
We are looking for applicants with overlapping interests in education, childhood and the natural world. Whilst previous study (and/or practice) in education would be helpful it is not essential.
This project relates to the Sustainable Futures pathway as part of the SWDTP.
Project lead
Additional staff
Contact
For an informal discussion about this area of research contact edsecbh@bath.ac.uk
Posthuman feminisms: Ecologies of mattering in higher education
Whose/which bodies matter most in higher education? Whose/which bodies are excluded, why and how? How can higher education institutions be changed to make them more capacious, more hopeful and more ecologically diverse places than is currently the case?
We’re interested in projects that take a curiosity-driven, theoretically-informed approach to questions such as these. There is a lot of flexibility to shape a particular PhD project aligned to your specific interests.
If you are interested in questions of how higher education can be re-formed to produce more sustainable, relational and ethical ways of being and contest white, colonialist, patriarchal legacies, and are interested in using arts-based methodologies (materials, objects, affects, embodied and sensory ethnographic practices), then do get in touch to discuss potential project ideas.
This project relates to the Sustainable Futures pathway as part of the South West Doctoral Training Partnership (SWDTP).
Project lead
Additional staff
Contact
For an informal discussion about this area of research contact c.a.taylor@bath.ac.uk