Education Archives - Page 4 of 10

27/06/202006/08/2020

Pedalling from Courage

As part of my bike PhD, I get to read lots of great bicycle inspired literature. Some of this awesome research includes Mike Lloyd’s bike research on the non-looks of the mobile world, new developments in no-nose saddle research and international projects like Paulus Maringka’s Greencycle Project in NZ.

Some academic publications are a bore to read, but there are the rare few that are accessible and engaging.

Today, I am sharing one that fits that bill. It is a reflection piece in the most recent issue of the Journal of Narrative Politics. It is by Manu Samnotra.

This article includes 7 vignettes, each of which shows various insights into Manu’s Florida bike-university-international lifeworld. I have chosen one particular vignette, to share here, which is the fourth in the paper (pg 62-63) which is the shortest vignette. It was originally presented as a one-paragraph moment. I chose this piece as it is concise, familiar and accessible (clearly written and articulated and not overly theoretical – thank goodness!).

Although it is an academic publication, it is a personal piece that bike riders can relate too. Elsewhere in the article, Manu explores themes or family, mobility, education, immigration/citizenship, friendship, community and more.

Manu’s writing is not at all cumbersome or heavily referenced (which is a unique feature of the Journal of Narrative Politics). I’d recommend checking out the whole article (see below). I have changed the layout of this section to better suit the blog format. Enjoy! NG.

Samnotra, M. (2020). Pedaling from Courage. Journal of Narrative Politics, 6(2).

Get a full copy of this article here

Pedalling from Courage. Bicycles Create Change.com 27th June 2020.

We were on our bicycles on our way to the university, rolling on a path unmarred by borders and hierarchies. We saw two figures in the distance.

Pedaling.

Perhaps we registered its novelty; in this neighborhood where we rarely saw any children, and where there were no cars parked during the day, it was strange to see pedestrians walking in the middle of the street. Whirring. We were discussing what we might cook that night for dinner.

Pedaling.

We hear voices now, distant voices, and there is shouting. The road is much smoother in this part of the ride. Whirring. We exchange glances. As we get closer, we notice that the figures in the distance, getting nearer to us every moment, are not white. The color of their skin became apparent before anything else.

Pedaling.

We see now that one of them is gesticulating. Sticking arms out sideways, questioning.

Pedaling.

We notice now that one of them is a man. We hear his words clearly. He is angry. He is insulting her. Whirring. He is demanding that she stop what she is doing and acknowledge him. A few feet away, and we realize that the woman is walking ahead of the man. Whirring. Her body is stiffened, but not in the way that suggests that they are strangers. Whirring. She is trying to maintain a distance between them. As we are about to cross them, the man stretches forward and punches her. It grazes the back of her head. She stumbles but quickly regains her footing and keeps walking.

Pedaling.

We two cyclists look at each other.

Pedaling.

We are already a block down the path before we realize what we have seen. Whirring. No, that is not right. We know what we saw. Whirring. It just takes us that long to acknowledge what we have seen. She wants to stop pedaling. Our bikes come to skidding halt. She was always braver than me. I tell her not to stop.

Pedaling.

We cover the rest of the distance until we reach the university where we finally consider what we have seen.

Manu Samnotra teaches political theory at the University of South Florida. He can be reached at msamnotra@usf.edu

23/06/202031/07/2020

Cycling for a better brain and happiness

Scientists are confirming what most cyclists instinctively know – that riding a bike has extraordinary effects on our brain chemistry. This article is by Simon Usborne (@usborne) and was first published in The Independent. In this article, Simon summaries some key scientific studies from different contexts to explore the multifarious and significant impacts cycling has on our brains – just another reason to love getting on your bike! Enjoy! NG.

You need only look at the physique of Bradley Wiggins to appreciate the potential effects of cycling on the body. But what about the mind? For as long as man has pushed a pedal, it’s a question that has challenged psychologists, neurologists and anyone who has wondered how, sometimes, riding a bike can induce what feels close to a state of meditation.

I’m incapable of emptying my mind but there have been occasions on my bike when I realise I have no recollection of the preceding miles. Whether during solo pursuits along country lanes in spring, or noisy, dirty commutes, time can pass unnoticed in a blissful blur of rhythm and rolling.

It’s not a new sensation.

In 1896 at the height of the first cycling boom, a feature in the The New York Times said this about the activity: “It has the unique virtue of yielding a rate of speed as great as that of the horse, nearly as great as that attained by steam power, and yet it imposes upon the consciousness the fact that it is entirely self-propulsion.”

The writer, credited only as “ANJ”, continues: “In the nature of the motion is another unique combination. With the great speed there are the subtle glide and sway of skating, something of the yacht’s rocking, a touch of the equestrian bounce, and a suggestion of flying. The effect of all this upon the mind is as wholesomely stimulating as is the exercise to the body.”

Almost 120 years after these observations, and in the middle of a new cycling boom, what have we learnt about the nature and effects of this stimulation? Cycling can of course be miserable, but beyond its ability to more often make me feel emotionally as well as physically enriched, what could be happening inside my head?

Several studies have shown that exercises including cycling make us smarter. Danish scientists who set out to measure the benefits of breakfast and lunch among children found diet helped but that the way pupils travelled to school was far more significant. Those who cycled or walked performed better in tests than those who had travelled by car or public transport, the scientists reported last month. Another study by the University of California in Los Angeles showed that old people who were most active had 5 per cent more grey matter than those who were least active, reducing their risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

But what is about cycling that leads me to believe it has a peculiar effect? John Ratey is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. He can’t point to a specific reason but says he has seen patients whose severe depression has all but disappeared after they started to cycle.

Rhythm may explain some of the effects.

“Think about it evolutionarily for a minute,” he says. “When we had to perform physically, those who could find an altered state and not experience the pain or a drag on endurance would have been at an advantage. Cycling is also increasing a lot of the chemistry in your brain that make you feel peaceful and calm.”

At the same time, the focus required to operate a bicycle, and for example, to negotiate a junction or jostle for space in a race, can be a powerful medicine. Dr Ratey cites a study his department is currently conducting. More than 20 pupils with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are expected to show improved symptoms after a course of cycling.

The link between cycling and ADHD is well established. It’s “like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin,” Dr Ratey says. Ritalin is a stimulant commonly used to treat ADHD in children by boosting levels of neural transmitters. Exercise can achieve the same effect, but not all exercise is equal

In a German study involving 115 students at a sports academy, half the group did activities such as cycling that involved complex co-ordinated movements. The rest performed simpler exercises with the same aerobic demands. Both groups did better than they had in concentration tests, but the “complex” group did a lot better.

Cycling has even been shown to change the structure of the brain.

In 2003, Dr Jay Alberts, a neuroscientist at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute in Ohio, rode a tandem bicycle across the state with a friend who has Parkinson’s to raise awareness of the disease. To the surprise of both riders, the patient showed significant improvements.

Dr Alberts conducted an experiment, the results of which were reported last month. He scanned the brains of 26 Parkinson’s patients during and a month after an eight-week exercise programme using stationary bikes.

Half the patients were allowed to ride at their own pace, while the others were pushed incrementally harder, just as the scientist’s tandem companion had been. All patients improved and the “tandem” group showed significant increases in connectivity between areas of grey matter responsible for motor ability. Cycling, and cycling harder, was helping to heal their brains.

We don’t know how, exactly, this happens, but there is more startling evidence of the link between Parkinson’s and cycling. A clip posted on YouTube by the New England Journal of Medicine features a 58-year-old Dutchman with severe Parkinson’s. In the first half of the video, we watch the unnamed patient trying to walk along a hospital ward. He can barely stand. Helped by a physiotherapist, he manages a slow shuffle, before almost falling. His hands shake uncontrollably.

Cut to the car park, where we find the man on a bicycle being supported by staff. With a push, he’s off, cycling past cars with perfect balance and co-ordination. After a loop, he comes to a stop and hops to the ground, where he is immediately immobile again. Doctors don’t fully understand this discrepancy, or kinesia paradoxica, either, but said the bicycles rotating pedals may act as some sort of visual cue that aided the patient’s brain.

The science of cycling is evidently incomplete, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about it for the everyday rider, its effects on hyperactive children notwithstanding, is that it can require no conscious focus at all.

The apparent mindlessness of pedalling can not only make us happier (“Melancholy,” the writer James E Starrs has said, “is incompatible with bicycling”) but also leave room for other thoughts, from the banal to the profound.

On the seat of my bike, I’ve made life decisions, “written” passages of articles, and reflected usefully on emotional troubles. Of his theory of relativity, meanwhile, Albert Einstein is supposed to have said: “I thought of it while riding my bicycle.”

01/04/202023/12/2021

New Materialism SIG: My bicycles-for-education PhD fieldwork presentation

Note: the first 2020 NM SIG gathering was held before COVID-19 social distancing and workplace lockdown came into effect – hence us meeting in person.

As many of you know, I am the co-convenor of a New Materialism Special Interest Group (SIG) at Griffith’s Institute for Educational Research (GIER). Each month a group of HDR candidates, Early Career Researchers and Academics meet to explore, discuss, experiment and share complex and emerging post-qualitative ideas, methods and approaches.

New Materialism is the framing I am using for my African girls’ bicycles-for-education PhD Project. To kick off the first SIG for 2020, I presented my African fieldwork.

I’ve had a few people contact me asking how the trip went. Below is a snapshot of my bicycle PhD project, the context and what I did during my PhD fieldwork in Lunsar, Sierra Leone.

Here’s some highlights of my fieldwork presentation (more details in slides below).

Opening: An Acknowledgement of Country, Diversity and Inclusion and that Matter Matters and thanks to the local Lunsar chiefs and the amazing people who have been instrumental in helping make this project happen.
Researcher positionality: Who am I and how did I come to this project
Research context background : 5 intersections of Girls unfreedoms
Girls Ed Lit Review: Current directions in NGO Literature on the topic
Establish Space: Key Project that opens up my research space – completed in 2010
Confirm & Extend: Follow up – a specific project on girls bicycle projects in Lunsar – completed 2016
Established gap leads into my research questions (no slide for this = top secret!)
My Study Design: Aims, Methodology and theoretical framing (NM)
Fieldwork details: Tech Matters and other research developments/considerations
Country context: Background to Sierra Leone (very general history & context)
Site Location: Background and context about Lunsar (my fieldwork location)
Research partnership case study: Intro to Village Bicycle Project (organization) Stylish (host/research participant/all-round incredible man!)
Fieldwork ‘Data’: list of all the research data/activities achieved (so busy!) and other events, opportunities and visits – so busy!
Present some ‘Data‘: I showed some fieldwork bike ride footage for discussion (no slide – top secret)
The return: Now I have returned, I outlined my next steps and questioned how/what to do to start ‘data analysis’
Q&A: Open discussion and suggestions on entry points for data analysis using NM approaches.

Aside from being able to share my fieldwork experiences with others, it was also great to get stuck into some rigorous academic discussions and come away with a number of productive and tangible ideas to apply for data analysis.

Most satisfying of all though, was seeing how interested people are in Sierra Leone and having the opportunity to promote and celebrate the beautiful people, places and experiences I had there.

26/03/202029/05/2020

Pedal4PNG Bike Ride

Pedal4PNG. Bicycles Create Change.com 26th March 2020.

While looking at some pacific community bike projects, I came across the Pedal4PNG Bike Ride.

It sparked my interest as it was relatively small and specific and offered a unique riding opportunity through Papua New Guinea. It also provides some ideas for other organisations (like Village Bicycle Project in Lunsar, Sierra Leone who I have just returned home from) might consider as a way to increase exposure, contacts and fundraising.

Pedal4PNG Bike Ride

The Pedal4PNG Bike Ride was a 6-day event held in 2018 and run by Australian Doctors International (ADI) to raise funds for PNG‘s Healthy Mums and Healthy Babies programs.

ADI provide support in PNG which is only five km north of Queensland. But unlike Aussie kids, 6% of Papuan children won’t live to reach the age of five. ADI explain this in simple terms: for every soccer team of kids, that’s one not making it as far as kindy age.

Children die in PNG every day from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and pneumonia. Meanwhile, their mothers face a mortality rate of 250 mums per 100,000 live births, with under 50% of births medically supervised.

Proceeds of the ADI Pedal4PNG Bike Ride went to supporting the critical work Australian Doctors International carries out in PNG to provide better health outcomes for young children and mums.

Currently, ADI is working on the frontline with local authorities on a COVID-19 PNG taskforce.

ADI Integrated Health Patrols

Australian Doctors International has a unique model: conducting monthly patrols to rural and remote areas, where healthcare is generally inaccessible.

This is locally sustainable health care in action – prevention and treatment in the isolated communities where over 85% of the PNG population lives.

ADI teams provide a mix of skills and staff to deliver hands-on health care and save lives.

ADI doctors deliver clinical capacity building for front line PNG health workers to improve health service delivery in the areas of child and maternal health, malaria, TB and lifestyle diseases.

The Bike Trip

This bike trip was from Namatanai (in the north) down to Kavieng (in the South) covering a total of 260kms on roads throughout the New Ireland Province.

The trip was advertised as a ‘bike adventure’ and given the tropical heat (30C +) and physical challenge of riding through some varied terrain including some hills and it was best the riders knew about the conditions. But the riding was mostly on sealed roads, so the actual surface was not that difficult. There were a couple of longer days (up to 100 km), so doing some training was advised.

As with any international in-country charity bike ride, built into the itinerary was time for cultural events, meeting locals, time to explore local surrounds, have R&R and opportunities to surf, relax and visit some handi/craftsmiths.

This ride had a few other perks I hadn’t seen before, particular to only PNG of course, which was the option to go and watch chocolate making at Rubios as well as do some local scuba diving and fishing and explore the WWII sites and history along the island.

What I appreciated is that the trip number was capped at ten which is a good number for an adventure ride – enough to have some diversity in personalities, but not too much that the group is so large that it takes hours to get ready or do anything.

Trip Details

Sunday 13 May: arrive in Kavieng, welcome dinner and overnight at Nusa Island Retreat
Monday 14 May: transit to Namatanai, with visits to several different health clinics, afternoon visit to hospitals, unpacking of bikes and overnight at Namatanai Lodge
Tuesday 15 May: ride to Rubio’s (40km)
Wednesday 16 May: plantation tour, chocolate making, ride 110km to Fissoa
Thursday 17 May: 100km ride into Kavieng, visit giant eels, final dinner Nusa Island Retreat
Friday 18 May: depart (although we recommend staying the weekend for some diving!)

Along the way, riders stopped to visit healthcare clinics and hospitals that were supported by ADI, so they got to see first-hand some of the health issues and programs that were underway to meet the needs of locals.

Overall is looks like a great adventure ride to do. What appeals to me most is the small group number and how riders can go and visit clinics to better appreciate local health issues. ADI noted in their Annual Report 2018 that the ride had been a success.

It might take a lot of work to organise and I know these rides are not for everyone, but it is good to some diversity in charity bike ride offerings beyond the (dare I say ‘stale’) mass rides for cancer research events.

Best of luck ADI!

All images courtesy of ADI.

09/12/201901/01/2020

AARE – Australian Association of Research in Education 2019 Conference

The Australia Association for Research in Education (AARE) annual national conference was held in Brisbane this week.

I was supposed to be in Cape Town (South Africa) presenting at two conferences: The 2019 New Materialist Reconfigurations of Higher Education Conference (Dec 2-4th 2019)and then straight after that conference Pedagogies in the Wild – the 3^rd South African Deleuze & Guattari Conference on 4-6^th December.

But I withdrew due to rising safety concerns UWC was shut down following heated local protests against gender-based violence, rape and femicide during the recent World Economic Forum that continued to escalate.

What is AARE?

AARE is Australia’s premier network for educational researchers. A key aim for AARE is to inform and improve policy and practice in education – and share these insights with other interested parties.

AARE blog is where experts share opinions, raise questions and explore education themes and issues.
AARE has an impressive range of special interest groups (SIGs).
The annual conference is the most popular AARE offering. Each year, local educational professionals from Australia and around the world come together to network, share ideas and hear about the latest educational research, projects and approaches. Here are some keynote presentations from past conferences and some past papers.

AARE 2019 Conference

The theme for this conference was ‘Education for a Socially Just World.

The sessions on offer are extensive (dare I say overwhelming?).

The truncated program of abstract titles only alone is 274 pages – click here.

The complete program (full abstracts) is a whopping 1162 pages – click here.

So many great sessions to choose from – and some very big names.

As I am a researcher working with New Materialisms, I definitely wanted to go to and see independent (New Materialist) scholar Bronwyn Davies.

In order to save my sanity, time and effort I just decided to stick with seeing what the Post- Structural Theory SIG had on offer – and then go to any other sessions/speakers who caught my eye.

Here, in no particular order are some of my hot tips for AARE 2019 sessions:

Sarah Healy (Melbourne Uni), Alli Edwards (Monash Uni), Alicia Flynn (Melbourne Uni). Welcome to the Playtank! Re-_____ing research.
David Bright (Monash Uni). Qualitative inquiry and Deleuze and Guattari’s minor literature: In which I consider verisimilitude as a criterion for judging the quality of qualitative writing with reference made to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse 5 albeit not really in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore. (I went to this session and it was amazing! It ended up winning the Best Session Award 2019 for the whole conference – and rightly so!).
Parlo Singh (Griffith Uni) and Gabrielle Ivinson (Manchester Metropolitan Uni, UK). Radical Inclusion Research in/with Schools Serving High Poverty Communities.
Sarah E. Truman (Melbourne Uni), David Ben Shannon (Manchester Metropolitan Uni, UK). Queer textualities and temporalities: speculating-with Alpha Centauri.
Lucinda McKnight (Deakin Uni), Melissa Wolfe (Monash Uni) and Bronwyn Davies (Independent scholar). Is new materialism incompatible with social justice? Panel Discussion with Professor Bronwyn Davies.
Maria Ejlertsen (Griffith Uni). “I don’t fit in, I fit out”: Enabling more-than inclusive spaces for student belonging and engagement with school through attention to more-than-human entanglements of spacetimematter.

I went for the full three days and to as many sessions as I could (these were just a few).

I also went to the below session which was the first in a series of AARE Post-Structuralist SIG Event Series feat. Professor Bronwyn Davies funded by AARE Poststructural Theory SIG Major Grant 2019. See abstract below.

Exploring the poetics and the ethics of new materialist inquiry: Professor Bronwyn Davies

As researchers, our task is to get inside the processes of those materialisations of the world that we encounter (where encounter is not a collision but a mutual affecting and being affected); it is to find or generate the concepts that will enable us to see those encounters not in normative, already-known terms, but in ways that open up new possibilities for sensing and responding, for becoming sense-able and response-able. That is the ethics of new materialism.

And what of the poetics? New materialist research is necessarily playful. It crosses disciplinary boundaries, messing those boundaries up; it works with new and emergent philosophical concepts, bringing them to life through art, poetry, literature; it enters into the very specificity of sensual existence as it is caught in a moment of spacetime and simultaneously opens up, or finds its way into life itself. Through such explorations it seeks to break loose from old dogmas, old methods, old binaries—all the paraphernalia of a normalized set of thoughts and practices that place the individual human above and separate from the world, and that constrain research through the repetition of the already-known. It seeks to open up thought, giving space to emergence of new ways of understanding, new ways of becoming, throwing off the shackles of the clichéd conventions of rationality and order.

In the workshop following this paper, I will present one or more of my own explorations that begin with where I am, or slip right into the middle, and then reflect on what was involved in going there. What re-conceptualising was involved? What new practices? What ethics? What poetics? I will then open up that exploration with the audience, inviting them to shift from being audience to becoming participants, giving them an opportunity to talk and write about something that matters to them in their encounters with more-than-human relationality, that called/calls on their sense-ability and response-ability.

30/11/201904/12/2019

Bikes help break the poverty cycle

For this blog post, we are looking at how bicycles are being integrated into two programs run by Australian-based INGO Global Hand Charity.

Global Hands Charity

Global Hand Charity (GHC) is an Australian international NGO founded in 2008 that works to improve educational opportunities for children in remote communities in Laos, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and now Cambodia.

During their initial programs, GHC quickly realised that before children could learn, basic needs like access to drinking water and toilets or WASH (Water and Sanitation and Hygiene) needed to be addressed. So before working on education, they built wells, toilets and showers near the schools before introducing learning interventions.

GHC have a strong supporter base and links to a number of Australian universities (like Curtin University). 100% of all money raised by GHC go directly to people in need. They are completely volunteer-run and do not take any money for administrations costs. Their running costs are supported by government grants.

Two of Global Hands Charity projects involve bicycles. First, GHC’s Education program Bicycles Program: Bicycles break poverty program has provided bicycles to remote communities to help local Laotian children access schooling. Second, Trade school: building a sustainable future is a bicycle repair and trade skill workshop space to upskill children with diff-abilities (deaf and mute).

Bikes help break the poverty cycle. Bicycles Create Change.com 30th Nov 2019. — Schoolgirls in Laos

Bicycles Program: Bicycles break poverty program

In remote villages where schools are scarce, many kids walk on average 4 hours a day to attend school. Some travel up to 8 hours return. With a bike, these same children can ride the 10-15 km to get to their local Secondary School in less time, more safely and still have the energy to learn.

Currently in Laos, only 50% of students attend secondary school because they are usually further away. Most primary schools are located in villages, so the travel is less and attendance is usually about 85%. The transition from primary to secondary school is a critical aspect of continuing education – and bikes are a way to address this issue.

To test the program, initially 50 bikes were donated by GHC as well as another 50 bikes going to Sister Catherine’s Trade School (Laos). Since then, the program has expanded and more bikes have been distributed.

Trade school: building a sustainable future

GHC has built a bike and carpentry shed at the Disabled Children’s School for Deaf and Mute in Luang Prabang (Laos). The Shed is a place for students to learn how to repair and service bicycles donated through GHC’s Bike Program. This program is specifically for the deaf-mute boys at the school.

So far over 100 bikes have been purchased to enable children in remote villages to attend secondary school up to 20 km away. Working alongside the Bicycle Program, students who extend skills in bike repairs and carpentry skills as a way to build skills for future employment opportunities.

Another Trade School project taught girls commercial cooking, hospitality, hair and beauty skills to reduce the risk of girls crossing the border into Thailand and ending up in sex work on living on the street.

GHC Core Programs

Global Hand Charity has 4 core programs: Education, Schools & Buildings, Healthcare and Community. Here is an overview of some of their initiatives:

Education

Textbooks: Books for education (Laos)
Professional Learning: Teacher Education (Vietnam)
Bicycles Program: Bicycles break poverty Program (Laos)

Schools & Buildings

Dormitories: A Safe place for girls to realise dreams (Vietnam)
Community Centres: Community hubs for families (Laos)
Trade School: Building a sustainable future (Laos)

Healthcare

Deaf & Mute Orphanage: Hearing for the first time (Laos)
Mobile Eye Care Camps: Seeing a way out of poverty (Laos, Sri Lanka)
Medical Visits & Funding: Making lives easier (Laos)

Community

Clean Water: Tippy Tap saves lives (Universal)
Girls Hygiene Project: Laos girl power (Laos)
Hygiene Bags: Hoikor Bags (Laos)

Helping others

Global Hands Charity is committed to making positive change for rural kids in Laos and Sri Lanka which are among some of the poorest countries in the world.

In these rural villages, there are no doctors or hospitals and children stop going to school because it is too far and too difficult to walk.

GHC is providing community nurses and running free medical clinics in rural community centers, building schools, learning centers, dormitories and providing bicycles so kids can access education. They also provide specialist educational and medical programs, such as vision and hearing initiatives, that are not available in many parts of South East Asia.

Organisations such as Global Hands Charity can help improve education, employment and health opportunities for locals living in remote areas– and it is great to see bicycles playing an important part in these projects.

26/11/201901/06/2021

New Materialisms SIG: Sharing data that ‘glows’

This was our final SIG Meeting for 2019. Oh no!

For this last meeting we did things a little differently!

Instead of having a guest presenter, we invited everyone to present.

In the spirit of New Materialisms, we wanted to hear, seem think-with lots of different voices, perspectives, approaches and ‘data’.

So , we asked attendees to bring a piece of data that ‘glows’ and that they would like to re-turn-with other members of the SIG.

The idea here is that we are all working on different research projects, with different applications and with different data. As we break for the holidays for the end of the year, we thought it might be interesting for participants to share a part of their research with others as a way of mining alternative insights.

We asked participants to chose a data’ selection’ that was digestible in a short time frame (i.e. within 2 minutes to present to leave time for discussion).

An example of this might be 100 words of writing/transcription or an image or an object.

And we had a great time!

Participants shared all kinds of ‘data’ – photos, images, artwork, audio, moments of research(er)-becomings and other material. I won’t share people’s content here as the material is often confidential, part of resarch project (covered by Ethics) or personal – you had to be there!

It was lovely to have the time and space to share work and ideas and get some inspiration to tide us over the holiday – and to get some fresh eyes and ideas to look anew at the content and ideas we were working with.

What a way to end the year!

Below are some moments from the workshop – it was super fun and inspiring!

Image: Night Owl City

Reading material for this meeting

There are two readings for this SIG meeting were selected as they attempt to articulate the difference between fNM approaches and other (post)qualitative approaches.

Jackson, A. Y. (2013). Making matter making us: Thinking with grosz to find freedom in new feminist materialisms. Gender and Education, 25(6), 769-775. doi:10.1080/09540253.2013.832014.

Hughes, C., & Lury, C. (2013). Re-turning feminist methodologies: From a social to an ecological epistemology. Gender and Education, 25(6), 786-799. doi:10.1080/09540253.2013.829910.

17/11/201920/11/2019

International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC2019)

International Cycling Safety Conference 2019. Bicycles Create Change.com 17th Nov 2019. — Image: ICSC 2019

This week the best minds working on cycling safety are coming to my home town!

The 8^th International Cycling Safety Conference (ICSC2019) is being held in Brisbane this week on the 18-20 November 2019 at QUT.

This is the first time this conference has been held in Australasia.

This event is hosted by the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q).

Included among the delegates attending are Australian and international keynote speakers, advocacy groups, researchers, practitioners, businesses and policymakers.

This conference includes research presentations, workshops, technical tours, poster presentations, networking opportunities and other social events.

Full Conference Program here

What is on?

The conference goes for 3 days and is jam-packed full of sessions.

The program also boasts a host of international guests, with delegates coming in from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Japan, Norway, USA, Sweden, Canada and as the host country – Australia has a very strong representation from pretty much every University nationwide.

Presentation sessions are discussing ideas such as: obstacle avoidance manoeuvres, e-scooters/e-bikes, infrastructure challenges, rider/pedestrian conflicts, traffic control, crash data, bikeshare data and social media interfaces, and lane marking/intersection analysis, bicycle delivery modalities, and studies using agent-based modelling – and more!

I ‘m not attending this conference because I prefer to focus on the positive aspects of bicycle riding – which of course safety is part of…I just don’t want to be constantly working with ‘negatives’ such as crash figures, injuries and traffic hot zones and contestations – also crunching quantitative data is not my strongest research skill. But I appreciate that this is super interesting to many cycling researchers and policymakers. Such conversations and information sharing is critical to progressing more innovative solutions to cycling dilemmas and to increase the take up of biking universally.

Daily synopsis

Monday is the first conference day. The day is split into four sessions under two main streams: Workshops and Technical Tours. The two workshops offered are: Low-cost infrastructure for low cycling countries and Using bikes for all kinds of deliveries. Concurrently there are 5 technical tours: Inner City (x 2), Riverside, Bicentennial Bikeway and Connecting the infrastructure. The evening is the Welcome Reception and Stakeholder Dinner.

Tuesday before morning tea is official registrations, Introduction and Opening Keynote Trends and innovation research in cycling safety by Prof Christopher Cheery (Uni of Tennessee, USA).

Then there are 2 rooms running concurrent 20 min presentation sessions all the way up to afternoon tea except for a Conference Plenary and another Keynote Cycling Infrastructure: if you build it, will come? (and will they be safe?) by Dr Glen Koorey (ViaStrada, NZ) after lunch.

Tuesday afternoon session has two 1-hour Rapid Oral Presentation sessions followed by Meet the Poster Author’s Function and then the official Conference Dinner.

Wednesday morning opens with a Conference Panel session entitled Arising trends & challenges: what, why & how. Then a full day of 1-hour and 20 min concurrent presentation sessions all the way up to 4.30pm… Phew – what a long day!

At 4.30 it is ICSC Awards and official conference close. The final official event is the Peoples’ Night from 5pm.

Then it’s party time!

People’s Night

For the first time, the ICSC community is inviting the general public to attend the Cycling Conference free People’s Night.

I love the idea of a conference having a ‘People’s Night.’ Every conference should have one!

This is a unique opportunity to meet, discuss and network with conference delegates, check out the digital research poster, hear about some of the latest innovations, technology, infrastructure, developments, trends and findings in cycling safety research.

This event is offered in the spirit of the conference guiding principle to share cycling safety research with ALL stakeholders – which I think is a great move. Not everyone is interested or can afford the money or time to attend the whole conference, but to open up your doors and invite the local public an opportunity to interact with delegates is a very smart move – good for the conference, good for the locals!

I’ll be heading in for this event, so if you are in Brisbane on Wednesday night, I might see you there! If you would like to attend you can RSVP via the ICSC FB page HERE. Details below.

Date: Wednesday 20 November
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Venue: The Cube, P Block, QUT Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane
Cost: Free
Inclusions: Complimentary food and non-alcoholic beverages

If you are riding your bike in and around Brisbane this week, check out the ICSC. Always good to get the latest intel of what is happening in the cycling world!

Hopefully, the safer it is to ride a bike, the more people will ride.

If that is the case, get ya conference on ICSC 2019!!

30/09/201922/10/2019

2nd Feminist New Materialisms Special Interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting

2nd Feminist New Materialism Special interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting. Bicycles Create Change.com 30th September, 2019. — Griffith University GIER – FNM SIG 2nd Meeting

As regular readers of this blog know, I am undertaking my bicycle PhD with Griffith University, School of Professional Studies. I am using Feminist New Materialisms (FNM) to explore how bicycles enable or constrain rural African girls’ access to education. I need to better understand FNM (which is essentially Quantum Physics applied to Social Science/Education). To do this, I want to read, talk, process and write about FNM with others who know what the heck I’m on about as a way to bounce ideas around and learn more.

So in August, I teamed up with Dr Sherilyn Lennon (who is also my PhD Supervisor par excellance) and we established a Feminist New Materialism Special interest Group (FNM SIG) and had our first meeting. It went really well!

We meet once a month and the time came around pretty quick for our September meeting.

I was delighted!

2^nd Feminist New Materialisms Special interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting

In keeping with the ethical intent of fNM, Sherilyn and I intend using our forum as a way of flattening power hierarchies within and across the Academy. (We are currently co-authoring a publication on this exact topic).

This means that, as our meetings progress, we will be showcasing research from experienced (academics) and emerging researchers (candidates). So we invite all the participants to let us know if they would like to present their research ideas/dilemmas to the group for some open and honest feedback, or as a way to process and work through areas of research ‘stickiness’.

At this FNM SIG meeting, we have a guest presentation by Prof Simone Fullagar and Dr Wendy O’Brien (and Dr Adele Pavlidis who unfortunately could not make it) whose book, Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery, has just been published. See more about the book at the end of the post.

Congratulations!

After their presentation, we had open question/discussion time before moving into a group activity in order to collate some key terms that have emerged thus far.

The stimulus materials (see 2 attachments) for this meeting were provided by Prof Fullagar. The materials are an extract from their new book (Introduction) and an article that is structured around an interview with Karen Barad – a much quicker way of accessing her ideas than reading Meeting the Universe Halfway.

Fullagar, O’Brien & Pavalidis (2019) Feminism a Vital Politics Download

Barad (2012) Intra-active Entanglements Interview Download

In their informal presentation, Prof. Fullagar and Dr O’Brien shared insights about what it was like to conduct the research, how the process impacted them and some ‘moments of rupture’ they experienced.

The discussion was super interesting as different people were triggered by different aspects of what was shared. I am very keen to hear more about how people are actually applying FNM approaches in practice. This is one of the first opportunities I have had to read FNM work (readings) and then directly question the researchers who have undertaken a full-scale FNM framing. Insightful and inspiring!

We all felt the time went too quickly – we could have talked another 2 hours at least!

It is an aim of mine as co-convenor of the SIG to have an activity that collaborately produces some sort of output for each meeting. For this session it was a Wordle – Word Cloud.

We wanted to capture some of the key terms or concepts that the participants are aware of – or that came out of the readings. Here is what we created:

It was a very moving, inspirational and generative session.

Like many other who attended, I went back to my desk and made copious notes about what had bubbled up for me and what aspects has resonance with my own bicycle PhD research project.

Here is more info about their book: Drawing upon insights from feminist new materialism the book traces the complex material-discursive processes through which women’s recovery from depression is enacted within a gendered biopolitics. Within the biomedical assemblage that connects mental health policy, service provision, research and everyday life, the gendered context of recovery remains little understood despite the recurrence and pervasiveness of depression.

Rather than reducing experience to discrete biological, psychological or sociological categories, feminist thinking moves with the biopsychosocialities implicated in both distress and lively modes of becoming well. Using a post-qualitative approach, the book creatively re-presents how women ‘do’ recovery within and beyond the normalising imperatives of biomedical and psychotherapeutic practices.

By pursuing the affective movement of self through depression this inquiry goes beyond individualised models to explore the enactment of multiple self-world relations. Reconfiguring depression and recovery as bodymind matters opens up a relational ontology concerned with the entanglement of gender inequities and mental (ill) health.

Incredible work!

I can’t wait for the next SIG meeting!

Dr Natalie Lazaroo’s notes
Dr Sherilyn Lennon
Dr Natalie Lazaroo’s notes
FNM SIG discussions
Dr Natalie Lazaroo’s notes

24/08/201903/10/2019

Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019- Abstract Accepted!

Hooray!

My abstract for the upcoming Pedagogies in the Wild Conference has been accepted!

This is great news because I already have an abstract accepted for the international 2019 New Materialist Reconfigurations of Higher Education Conference (Dec 2-4th 2019) and this conference follows straight after (4-6^th December) and is at the same place – the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa).

I am working towards a research trifecta: 2 conferences and fieldwork in the one trip.

This conference is being affectionately referred to ‘the D & G conference’.

That is because it focuses on integrating the work of two highly influential scholars whose work is transdisciplinary and has had ‘epic consequence’ in many fields – Deleuze and Guattari. Gilles Deleuze is a philosopher and Felix Guattari is a psychoanalyst. Some their most influential works are: Anti-Oedipus, What Is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus. They have written extensively together on an array of topics. In particular for my project, their work has been foundational in extending New Materialists understandings.

The Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019 is being run for the third time and is solely focused on unpacking, exploring and apply Deleuze-Guattarian thinking and approaches.

As many regular readers of this blog know, my research is complexified by interrogating various aspects of power relations – such as gender in/justice, post-colonialism, and what/who are academic/research/educational ‘experts’.

The session I will be presenting is based on a publication I currently writing with my amazingly brave PhD Supervisor Dr Sherilyn Lennon.

Here is what I presenting

Title: Cycling-with-through-and-on the edge of the PhD supervisor-candidate relationship: A post-humanist bike ride to a different place.

Abstract: Traditionally, the PhD supervision relationship is predicated on a supervisor as expert – supervisee as learner/novice model of knowledge transmission. Most of the supervisory work is performed either on the university campus or via digital channels that allow the ‘expert’ to direct the conversation and establish the performance expectations for both candidate and supervisor. But what might be possible if the formalities and associated materialities of this power structure were to be disrupted and reframed?

This session presents insights that emerged when a PhD candidate and her Supervisor shared a bayside bicycle ride in Brisbane, Australia, to see what would happen. While the candidate was an expert bike rider, her Supervisor was far less experienced and somewhat anxious about her (st)ability. The bicycle ride was viewed as a way of deliberately disrupting and displacing traditional notions around academic performances, spaces of learning and who gets to navigate.

What emerged was surprising, revealing and uncomfortable.

The bicycle ride enabled encounters with/in the world/self that worked to queer the way in which both Supervisor and candidate understood their relationship. We contend that the candidate/supervisor relationship is an iterative and dynamic entanglement of forces wherein subjectivities, bodily performances, past experiences, fears, technologies, planned and unplanned encounters are forever and always entangled.

Influenced by Baradian philosophy, this session focuses on the material-discursive-affective phenomena that emerged as the experience of riding-with the candidate/supervisor. In this way “systems of entrapment that manifest power relations in the academy” and “instigate codes of conduct and…exclusionary practices that can limit how academic knowledges…are produced” (Charteris et al., 2019, p. 2) are able to be troubled, re-thought and re-balanced.

What is Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019?

Here is more about the conference: The recent #Rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall protests have set South African higher education on a new course towards transformation, focusing on equitable access to higher education, Africanisation and decolonisation.

Similar movements have reverberated across the globe, addressing issues of neoliberalism, for example in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and Chile; racism, as in Ghana and the US; and curfews on women students in India.

This has raised important questions regarding knowledge production; continuing structural racism, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia; the use and value of western theorists in research and curricula; and who gains epistemological and physical access to higher education.

On the other hand, we have seen many productive junctures between pedagogy, education studies and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. In particular, there has been a focus on cartography, schizoanalysis, corporeal theorising, rhizomatic learning and nomadic thought in socially just pedagogical praxis.

These junctures and innovative genealogies and methodologies can both address these issues and be further improved and made more precise by engagements with what it means to transform and reconfigure pedagogies and practices in higher education.

My Conference Stream – Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling

Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling: Places of/and/un/Learning in Higher Education

How can we challenge assumptions such as ‘knowledge belongs to experts’ in favour of materialist/experimental/experiential collaborations in teaching and learning?

Expanded Conference Topic 2

Higher education spaces are usually considered in relation to how they optimise student learning and, increasingly, how they optimise marketing potential to attract new students.

In addition, meanings of ‘space’, ‘place’, ‘environment’ and ‘context’ are often elided, and it is taken for granted that learning happens in classrooms, seminar rooms and lecture halls.

Such discourses take space for granted as a neutral background on which human endeavour is located.

Unschooling (in a meta sense rather than the narrow sense of homeschooling) resists this kind of pedagogy in favour of building real communities and replacing dry, nationalist agendas with different kinds of training programs, learning opportunities and methodologies, apprenticeships, internships and mentorships.

Unschooling thus represents a material politics aimed at genuine social freedom and enjoyable learning. Normative ways of understanding space and schooling are challenged by Deleuze-Guattarian understandings which, instead, conceptualise space as an entangled ‘constellation of human–nonhuman agencies, forces and events’ (Taylor, 2013: 688) within which objects, bodies and things do surprising and important if often unnoticed and mundane work as material agents and actants.

Theoretically, such work draws on and takes forward the rich traditions of feminist and postmodernist understandings of space developed by Doreen Massey, Henri Lefebvre, and Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of space and striation.

This theme therefore wishes to open up debates about higher education spaces by considering questions such as:

What is the role of architecture, design and infrastructure in higher education?
How might the materialities of higher education spaces and places be conceptualised via inter-, multi- and post-disciplinary frameworks?
How can we take account of the importance of places of informal learning?
How does the iterative materialisation of space-time-matter come to matter in higher education spaces?
How is higher education being spatially reconfigured in relation to global flows of bodies?
Which/ whose bodies matter in higher education spaces?
What new spatial imaginaries are needed for higher education to thrive?
How can feminist new materialisms in its overlaps and divergences with Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy aid us to produce new understandings of space-place-matter entanglements in higher education?
How can we challenge assumptions such as ‘knowledge belongs to experts’ in favour of materialist/experimental/experiential collaborations in teaching and learning?
What kinds of material and affective potential does unschooling offer us for thinking about curriculum development in Higher Education.

Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019- Abstract Accepted! — Exploring space-place-matter re-imaginings. Image: Joana Coccarelli

It’s not a new sensation.

Rhythm may explain some of the effects.

Cycling has even been shown to change the structure of the brain.

Pedal4PNG Bike Ride

ADI Integrated Health Patrols

The Bike Trip

Trip Details

What is AARE?

AARE 2019 Conference

Exploring the poetics and the ethics of new materialist inquiry: Professor Bronwyn Davies

Global Hands Charity

Bicycles Program: Bicycles break poverty program

Trade school: building a sustainable future

GHC Core Programs

Helping others

Reading material for this meeting

What is on?

Daily synopsis

People’s Night

2nd Feminist New Materialisms Special interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting

Here is what I presenting

What is Pedagogies in the Wild Conference 2019?

My Conference Stream – Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling

Topic 2. Spaces, Spatiality and Unschooling: Places of/and/un/Learning in Higher Education

Expanded Conference Topic 2

2^nd Feminist New Materialisms Special interest Group (FNM SIG) Meeting