For our August New Materialisms SIG, we were delighted to have Dr. Theresa Ashford (USC) share some of her current NM research considerations, thoughts and processes.
In this session, we explored how ethics feature in New Materialisms research.
NM Session: Ethics in/with classrooms, comics and computers.
This session explores the idea of New Materialisms and ethics. This is a tricky space that tests emergence and experience. In this session, Theresa used several key papers as a way to continue working-with how to pull these aspects together in some (in)comprehensible form.
Bio: Dr. Theresa Ashford is a Geography and Sustainability Lecturer in the School of Law and Society (USC). Her key interest is investigating human-non human ethics and responsibility – response(ability) in the world. Her undergraduate and postgraduate education is in Geography and spans physical and human geography domains. She has worked in the regional planning field in Canada and her Masters research explored the use and role of public spaces in the support and co-construction of homeless punk youth identities in Winnipeg, Canada. Dr. Ashford’s Ph.D. research (2018, Education, UQ) used Actor-network theory to investigate the emergence of digital ethics in 1:1 classrooms and the active role of technology mediating, supporting, and translating human behaviour and understandings.
In this session, Theresa deep-dived into Ethics and how it has been bubbling up in her work wide-ranging research.
Theresa set the ethical scene and outlined the Artistolian entry point she was using to discuss ethics.
She then led us through a series of ‘searching for ethics in awkward places’.
Theresa used the metaphor of a ‘Mud Map’ to introduce herself and establish how her background as a human geographer and teacher informs her concerns for the state of inequity in the world and across human-nonhuman spheres of doing. She also outlined her particular interest in phronesis (practical wisdom informed by a sound understanding of ethics, the world and humans), and how she uses Aristotelian means to navigate the excesses and deficits in life and theoretical applications in the world.
We then turned to (Bruno) Latour, ethics and technology.
Theresa spoke of the New Materialisms tenets of decentring anthropocentrism, reconfiguring subjectivity, and elevating the role of non-human actors.
She problematized this type of ‘rethinking’ as it extends to sources of ethics – to the extent of which she argued, could be considered a ‘breaking point’.
Theresa also spoke about the cultivation of ethics grounded in care for the world. Here, we were provoked to consider how we enact and perform care (recognizing it is a network effect) what is derived in a positive ethos and practices of cultivation (requires awareness/wisdom), ideas on care in the human estate – and our “manifold entanglements” with non-human, and how we might reorient ourselves profoundly in relation to the world, to one another and to ourselves (Coole & Fox, 2010) and bioethics.
Collaborative NM SIG word association
There are four main NM streams (see here for more on this). I sit with the feminist New Materialists within the Baradian tradition, so it was really enjoyable to learn more about the Latourian approaches to New Materialisms, such as how ANT:
Sees technology as a mode of existence (exploring existence and being)
Technology as ‘fold’ – time, space and actants – it keeps folded heterogeneous temporalities (materials, modes, memories, mobilities)
Technology extends potentialies unrealisable without its presence
Affordance – schemes of action – permission and promise – a new entity together
Tech mediation – inadequately captures the new possibilities created
Teresa used three data vignettes from her research (a school daily internet bandwidth usage, Women Woman Stuff, and student-Apps), to highlight some of the ethical sticky points and moments of insight that come from looking at these educational situations from an Ethics and ANT New Materialisms POV.
After this incredible presentation, we had a lively Q & A and an open forum to unpack some of these vexing and encouraging connections between ethics and New Materialisms.
Below are a few ideas from Dr. Ashford’s presentation. I’ve deliberately not included the full PPT to respect and protect Dr. Ashford’s intellectual property and current research.
It was an exciting, robust, and thought-provoking session – so much to think and talk about!
A massive thanks to Theresa for sharing her ideas and experiences so generously.
Theresa’s Publications
Ashford, T., & Curtis, N. (2020). Wonder woman: An assemblage of complete virtue packed in a tight swimsuit. Law, Technology and Humans, 2(2), 185-197. doi: 10.5204/lthj.1593
Ashford, T. (2021). App-centric students and academic integrity: A proposal for assembling socio-technical responsibility. Journal of Academic Ethics,19(1), 35-48. doi: 10.1007/s10805-020-09387-w
Readings
Blackman, T. (2020). Experiences of vulnerability in poverty education settings: developing reflexive ethical praxis. Postcolonial Directions in Education, 9(2) 198-225.
Waelbers, K., & Dorestewitz, P. (2014). Ethics in Actor Networks, or: What Latour Could Learn from Darwin and Dewey. Science and Engineering Ethics, 20, 23-40, doi: 10.1007/s11948-012-9408-1
All images from Dr. Ashford’s presentation (attributed in-text) unless otherwise specified.
As well as the erasure of other-than-European contributions within research, I am concerned about the (in)visibility and (de)valuing of female scholarship.
My current research into how bicycles feature in West African girls’ access to education has a strong gender theme – and I read a lot.
Who is writing about West African female experiences is revealing. It is difficult to find literature on this topic written by African scholars – and even less so, work by female African scholars and knowledge holders.
Overwhelmingly, work in this area is by white, European males.
Female authorship has always been under-represented – in all fields.
There is historical and current systematic bias in scientific information production and recognition for male scholar-authors, (Mathew Effect), while in comparison, female scholarship is still often ignored, denied credit or goes largely unrecognised (Matilda Effect).
And this is not only an academic issue. There are many international movements working to redress the erasure of women’s current and historical contributions – take Women’s History Month or the WikProject Women as examples.
The Reading with Reciprocity invite was the perfect opportunity to put into action more publicly, some In(Citing) experiments I’ve been working-with exploring how I might better support, promote and recognise female scholarship in my work.
Image: Andrea Piacquadio
Two approaches to (In)Citing Feminist Scholarship
In my book response (forthcoming – I will link here when made public), I used two approaches to make academic female contributions more visible.
1. Including first and surnames for in-text citations
First, I included the first and surname for all female (and other) scholars cited.
Historically, the academic writing-citing convention is to only cite surnames. It looks like this:
With no first name to distinguish otherwise, absolute supremacy of male linage and masculine privilege is reinscribed and unchallenged. So, I include the first name of female authors to destablise this conventional and draw attention to, identify and validate – female author within the male (sur)name convention.
This works best for author-prominent citations.
So my citations then looked more like this:
Glenda Dunne (2018) …..
or
……… (Glenda Dunne, 2018).
2. Include the academic position of female author-scholars
I also included the current academic position of the female scholars cited, not just the honorific “Dr.” as is convention.
“Dr.” is an educational qualification for people conferred with a PhD or doctorate, whereas Assistant Professor or Professor is an academic position grade within the academy – it denotes authority, seniority and status.
Far too often, women are note recognised in attaining the academic standing they have.
So, to counter this, instead of:
In this book, Dunne (2018) explores…
or
In this book , Dr Dunne (2018) explores..
My work started to integrate something more like this:
In this book, Prof. Dunne (2018) explores..
So now, I try to use more author-prominent in-text citations so I can apply first AND surname (see above) AS WELL AS deliberately insert the academic position of the author.
So now my citations look like this:
In this book, Prof. Glenda Dunne (2018) explores ...
This is definitely an unconventional move.
Academic positions can change if the person assumes a new roles or moves universities. ‘Dr.’ always stay the same (if given at all) no matter where you go, so that is the conventional default honorific.
This meant I had to do a little more research.
I had to look up the scholar and double check each female scholar’s current position for accuracy.
This additional ‘work’ helped keep me accountable to the feminist imperative of going the extra mile to learn more about the women scholars I was investigating and is a good reminder to be accurate and ethical in my representation of them.
I include the author’s academic titles as a deliberate push to draw attention to the advanced positions the female academics cited/referred to have achieved through expertise, knowledge and research. The title of Dr is not adequately meritous for such positions.
This is something I have been doing for a while in my academic work (like publications), but I am usually told to revert back to Dr or remove all honorifics.
(Note: I was asked by the editors of the feminist project I was writing for to add a (foot)note explaining to readers the reasoning for using these approaches as part of my final book response release.)
Else where in my workshops, Teaching and Learning sessions, and on this blog I have progressively been using this approach as my default – see for example: A/P Chelsea Bond BAM! on World Bicycle Day post.
And I will I continue to apply these (In)Citing techniques where ever possible.
My execution of these two approaches maybe a little clunky at times, but that is also because we (are all) so (un)used to a particular type of (In)Citing!
This experiment is also a long-term commitment… and a process – one that will no doubt change, morph, stumble, be updated and tuned up as my feminist engagement, ideas and experience flexes and fades, and expands and contracts.
For me, it is the engaging-experimenting-doing of feminist imperatives differently (such as greater reciprocity and visibility for female scholarship) that is most interesting in this endeavour.
It has been a very strange two weeks. I’ve tried to keep quiet and focused: thinking, writing, researching and working. I continue to learn a lot. Every day, I have my mind stretched and pulled in new and provocative ways – here’s a recent example in 100 words.
Geotracing Data Flavours
It’s been a busy week. Guarding alpacas and reading mushrooms. Being caught in a self-important fray with Cynosura. Tangling cosmologies with interrupted futurities to form bubbles that pop and fizzle and boil. Embroiled in sometimes clunky-relations that rely on motley sources. Summer’s easy riches buoyed by interludes of precarity and irregularity. Data flavours explode on hungry tongues, then blow down empty academic hallways, alone and unwanted. Visiting human-disturbed environments, ideas and bodies. (R)Evolutions patchy mimicry. Geotracing daunting resources that nurture the most private sensibilities and desires. And all the while, inhabiting moments speckled with capitalism, shamanism, and wild women.
For this month’s NM SIG meeting, we are putting to work New Materialisms differently. We are using NM to consider more deeply some of the wider and pressing current affairs and social movements of our day. There is much happening locally and globally that is troubling and significant – and these dynamics demand our attention and engagement as compassionate human beings, community members, ethical researchers, and citizens of the world.
So we are taking some time to check-in and think-with some of the current ‘big themes, events and issues’ in the news and media, in particular:
Women’s issues/rights and recent protests
COVID-19
Climate Change
…and to consider the human and non-human aspects of current events/news to tease out the ways these issues are entangled.
The highlight of this meeting is an interview with Dr. Adele Pavlidis – where we chat about a recent paper she co-wrote with Prof. Simone Fullagar that took an NM lens to the early days of COVID.
We also invited members to bring ideas about these current social issues with the purpose of linking them to our research.
Thinking through the disruptive effects and affects of COVID-19 with feminist New Materialisms
Dr. Adele Pavlidis is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University. She is a social scientist and writer who draws on a range of methods to better understand the world we live in. Her work examines the ways sport and leisure can be understood as spaces of transformation and ‘becoming’. Influenced by Deleuze and Guattari, Irigaray, and contemporary feminist writing on affect (Probyn, Ahmed, Blackman and others), Adele’s intellectual concern is with the possibility of a feminine cultural imaginary and a future open to possibility.
What happened in this meeting?
We had a great time! Lots of generative discussions.
Below are two 100-word worldlings I wrote as a summary of: 1) the interview and 2) the subsequent discussion.
Excavating the ‘no global’.
Thinking-with Adele’s disruptive effects and affects of COVID-19 and ‘the women’s problem’. Relationships between price, value and ‘what you get’ in (re)turn and environment. Quality, care, potentiality, privacy and openness. There is nothing wrong with being angry. Privileged intersections: Instagram’s ‘Advanced Style’ sans @suekreitzman. Loving the multiscalar. Considering Janelle Knox-Hayes’ ‘value of markets’ and the time-space sociomateriality of organisations and natural environments. There is no such thing as ‘the global’. Theresa’s feeling that this thinking is like GIS – layering data on top of each other, then exploring the multi-lens/scale mess reminds me of Karen Barad’s ‘stratification’. Purposefully ‘plugging in’.
Climate change inequities.
Climate change is a product of inequality. If we look at inequality as a practice that is connecting us or an outcome of/or a network of relations… or as predetermined/context/flows…. response-ability… can we flip inequality? What about inequality as something we are responsible for? Colonialism and modern economies of slavery. Emma Dabiri says Do not touch my hair and has great suggestions for What white people can do next – moving from allyship to coalition. Making visible individual actions and larger structures that remove agency. Moving to individual actuals as objects of inequalities. Challenging amnesias and re-collecting Feminist New Materialisms elsewhere.
Resources
For this meeting, we suggested the below resources to get the juices flowing.
Fullagar, S., & Pavlidis, A. (2020). Thinking through the disruptive effects and affects of the coronavirus with feminist new materialism. Leisure Sciences, 43(1-2), 152-159. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2020.177399. This paper (see above to download) focuses on the disruptive biocultural force of the coronavirus highlights the value of more-than-human perspectives for examining the gendered effects and affects on our everyday lives and leisure activities.
For a pure theoretical provocation, try this YouTube Karen Barad clip of a paper on troubling times/(Un)doing the future (31 min)
Dear Reader. If this is your first time on this blog – it is best not to start with the post below. This post is a disruptive edit expert-iment that begins ‘in the middle’. It will not make much sense if you’ve not seen some of my previous posts. Some of these posts (like the Geography and Collective Memories post – which you should check out) are getting increasingly ‘loose’ and ‘messy’ and working with ‘in-progress’ sensemaking – thus leading into more disruptive edits like this one. If you are new, perhaps start with the ‘clean and tidy’ version of this post – it is called Mother’s Day 2021 and is the precursor-basis for the exploration below.
If you are up for something different, read on!
*NB: this post is best read on a desktop – might be a little (more) odd if on a mobile device*
This post is not what it seems…well…. it is… and it isn’t.
What started out as a ‘normal’ post morphed into something else. Usually, blog posts are straightforward: informative, factual, opinion, or instructional. While I was writing on the topic ‘Mothers Day’ for this post – disruptive ideas and opportunities emerged. So… instead of ignoring or disregarding them, I embraced them. You could say this was also an experiment in applying diffraction thinking-doing (my theoretical approach I am using for my PhD) to other-than academic writing. This is new territory for me (to write) and for you (to read). What diffraction writing means here, is that instead of only sharing the usual polished final blog post, I’ve experimented with folded into the blog post my thinking-process-editing as I am writing it – a kind of disruptive writing-with blog post process. It might be a little weird and may or may not work. there will be typos and mistakes – some parts will just be notes or ‘snaps’ – resist the urge to edit for ‘correctness’. But I like the idea of doing something new and challenging what I think writing, especially such public writing! is or should be, going ‘beyond’, and being (more publicly) transparent with writing-as-process expert-iments. To try and show how this is working, the blog post content is in black text and the process content is in superscript like this. It would be easier to do this in a word document with track change comments which I have included below as a file for those interested in seeing it, but the here challenge is to see how it works within the functionality of a Word Press.org blog post.
Insert image of mum. Use creative commons to support alt artists. Attribute/link to promote photographer – preferably female. Use an image of other-than mainstream blond mum stereotype (in this case a redhead!) = have some sort of diversity to show a greater range of mums (blond mums already have a strong presence and representation online). See ‘undisrupted’ version of this post for alt (M)othering image
Mother’s Day: Give more thoughtful presence and presents
8th May is Mother’s Day.
Happy Mother’s Day mums – and dads and significant others and carers who also fill maternal roles. Dads and other/carers: I added this is it did not feel right to only single out ‘mums’ as there are many ‘others’ who are not officially a’ mother’ – yet who equally fulfil a similar role. A homage to my commitment to better recognizing the fluid and diverse experiences of what ‘mothering’ is – and I was raised by my father who was a consummate ‘mother’ and father and many other things…
For a previous Mother’s Day, I wrote about the issues I had with some Mother’s Day ‘suggested gifts for cycling mums’.
If you haven’t read my post Happy Fearful Mother’s Day Cycling Mums! check it out here – it’s well worth the read!Internal Hyperlink: I link back to my own blog to promote past writing and keep readership ‘inside’ my website where – also helped remind me of the amount of work I have already done and share from the archives … I LOVE the image I sourced for this hyperlinked post
I appreciate the sentiment of Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day) in taking time to recognise and celebrate the input and work mums do. I didn’t want this post to be ‘too negative’ or ‘down with Mum’s day’ – that’s not what I think or mean – I wanted some balance and make sure I acknowledge the positives of Mother’s Day.
I like to think that mums are always appreciated as they are on Mother’s Day (ie for the other 364 days of the year as well) – not just one day a year … anyhoo…
Mums have it especially? tough.
Women are advantaged in society and mothers in particular face enduring and unfair social and corporate pressures and constraints around childcare, unpaid labour, taking the load for emotional labour (the unpaid job men still don’t understand) and ‘being a good mother’, inequitable divisions of household labour, the hidden and overlooked value-cost-effort of stay-at-home mums and that working mums (well…all women) on average make only 82 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Christine Carter articulates these frustrations well in her piece: All I want for Mother’s Day is an equitable division of labour. Wanted to synthesis some facts into the post AND source more widely (ie not only read academic lit) AND get some mums voices in here. I’m hyperconscious that I’m not a mother, so am only presenting my POV on gender issues – not commenting on what it is like to BE a mum as that is not my direct, personal lived experience so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that – so I made a point to look for mums who have written on this topic and found this great article on emotional labor. It fit in beautifully. So funny – I had a conversation with a dear friend on this very topic…I think I’ll flip her this link as well! And yes… it is ‘a thing’…still!
With much work needed to address these systemic gender inequities, Mother’s Day is an opportunity to recognise these issues and celebrate mums and other female carers.
Traditionally, this means breakfast in bed, flowers, or lunches out with loved ones. link back here to ‘presents’ and conventional Mother’s Day approaches to lead into my final takeaway idea/content.
For cycling mums, it’s an opportunity to think more thoughtfully about the cycling presence and presents we give to mums and what these ‘gifts’ communicate, expect and perpetuate.
As I was writing this post, I’ve changed the title a few times. The changes reflect the different ‘moves’ I went through in writing the content – so in the spirit of transparent disruption – I am including that process here as well. It was at this stage of writing the post that I looked a the title and thought: ‘that title doesn’t fit anymore. The following section is a brief behind the scene thinking-editing-doing that went on at this stage. For reading ease I have not super-scripted this section despite it all being thinking-writing-as-process content.
I like the image above. It presents a not blond, white mum(gender?) House is a little messy and not presenting a ‘perfectly’ curated photo/family and the black LHS is suggestive of the ‘dark side’ of family life – fits well with overall post themes. It also helps break up blog content and helps separate the next section which is a new and different idea/focus.
Title: re-writing and re-righting
Initially the title was: Mother’s Day –more thoughtful presents, please!
It was tight and communicated the initial content main ideas. But it only named the ‘presents’ aspect, which was a very minor idea and didn’t fully capture the relational, non-commercial call to action I was putting forward.
So the next edit was: Mother’s Day –more thoughtful presents and presence, please!
I liked the homonym and alliteration of presents and presence – it fitted well with what I wanted to highlight. I looked at the order of the two keywords ‘presents’ and ‘presence’ and wonder how changing their placement might change the impact of the meaning of my overall message. I swapped them around to see that changed. I wanted to start with the known (presents) and end/lead into the blog main idea (presence) – so that was the final word order I chose.
Then: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presence and presents, please!
So I removed the: , please. It is a stronger statement – declarative and instructional, not a request and thus leaving open the final decision as to whether to act on this ‘request’ or not to other-than-the-mother-saying it .
Note to self: remove (more): , please(s).
Apply liberally – in general and elsewhere.
So then it was: Mother’s Day – more thoughtful presence and presents!
This was closer to the sentiment I wanted to convey. It is short and punchy and fits into (no more than) two lines of text as a heading – which is a good ‘grab’ for the WordPress RHS margin widget ‘Recent Posts’. The exclamation mark as an end made it read more of an imperative – but perhaps a little shouty – so I removed it. But then it was left hanging. I also wanted to give some notice as to the type of presentation/format this also helps with search features later on So I added: (Disruptive Edit) at the end. I added ‘Give’ at the start as I wanted to include mention of the action that was the crux of the post giving is a nice thing to do! I wanted the title to include someone doing something – and it read-felt much better with ‘give’. Then I stopped. gotta know when to stop! send it out now – share your process work, resist being ‘correct’ ‘right’ and ‘good’ just get it out there – it is in-process and raw so no more tinkering!
Final title: Mother’s Day: Give more thoughtful presence and presents (Disruptive Edit)
..then finish the blog content and close on a positive!
Interesting to note that WordPress backend drafting notifications (like the readability analysis, SEO, suggested ‘revisions’) are going crazy pining me to check and recheck. I have a list of sad red face emojis letting me know NEEDS IMPROVEMENT! – its the algorithm reminding me that this type of post ‘won’t work’ and is ‘not normal’ writing and formatting. I am ingoring them all.
(*PHEW*)
…and that dear reader is a little sneak-peak into some of the in-process ideas, considerations and edits that happen during the construction of blog posts!
Thanks for coming a long for this experimental ride into a disruptive edit!
ICQI 2021: Collaborative Futures in Qualitative Inquiry
ICQI…..you know….only the largest ……. and most respected qualitative research conference IN THE WORLD! … and with all the biggest names!
My PhD supervisor said I should consider submitting an abstract for this conference.
Doing so is a VERY BIG DEAL – this congress is the pinnacle in my field. I’ve never presented at this conference.
For the first time ever, the ICQI 2021 will be held online. This is a super attractive feature for me as it will mean if I get an abstract accepted to present, I wouldn’t have to spend the extra money to travel to the USA as was required for all previous (and probably subsequent) ICQIs. If I ever wanted to give ICQI a solid shot – this is it!
So I did – and my abstract got accepted! Woohoo!
My ICQI 2021 Abstract
Velo-onto-epistemology: Becoming(s)-with Bicycles, Gender, Education and Research. This paper traces some experimental and experiential wonderings of researching gendered journeys on bicycles in West Africa. This session shares what is unfolding for one rider-researcher as she works to excavate the entanglements, tensions and possibilities of becoming(s)-with post-qualitative inquiry that foregrounds African landscapes, smells, desires, dynamics, beliefs, practices and peoples with emerging feminist posthuman ontologies. My research puts to work feminist New Materialisms to explore how bicycles feature in West African girls’ access to secondary education. This undertaking is bold, complex and unsettling. It requires (re)turning (Barad, 2006) and challenging habitual preoccupations about bicycles, embodiment, movement, identity, ecology, sp/pl/p/ace and methodology. There is much about gendered bodies navigating trails that commands attention, yet defies explanation (McLure, 2013). Drawing on key encounters experienced in Brisbane (Australia) and Lunsar (Sierra Leone), I trace the skills, wills, spills and thrills from which a velo-onto-epistemology is emerging.
The 2021 Congress theme is: Collaborative Futures in Qualitative Inquiry.
The rapidly changing social, cultural, political, economic, and technological dynamics brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic are inescapable as we endeavor to move forward. The pandemic has also amplified hard truths about everyday life: the ongoing historical devaluation of teachers, nurses, and service workers, and the precarity of the working classes, the unyielding privileging of business and the free market as the answer to all social and health ills, the differential experience of the virus relative to race, class, and gender dynamics, including as related to co-morbidity and mortality rates, access to care, and visibility, the rise of right-wing populism and its deleterious impact on positive governmental responses to pandemic conditions, the prominence of conspiracy theories in mainstream and social media discourse (e.g., masks don’t help, virus is man-made, etc.).
At the same time, we cannot overlook the broader context in which the 2021 Congress will take place: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo creeping authoritarianism, environmental crises, economic shocks to higher education and continuing public health crises.
Collectively and collaboratively, this moment calls for a critical, performative, social justice inquiry directed at the multiple crises of our historical present.
We need a rethinking of where we have been, and, critically, where we are going.
We cannot go at it alone.
We need to imagine new ways to collaborate, to engage in research and activism. New ways of representing and intervening into the historical present. New ways to conduct research, and a rethinking of in whose interest our research benefits.
Sessions in the 2021 Congress will take up these topics, as well as those related to and/or utilizing:
feminist inquiry
Critical Race Theory
intersectionality
queer theory
critical disability research
phenomenology
Indigenous methodologies
postcolonial and decolonized knowing
poststructural engagements
diffraction and intra-action
digital methodologies
autoethnography
visual methodologies
thematic analysis
performance
art as research
critical participatory action research
multivocality
collaborative inquiry
………..and the politics of evidence.
Sessions will also discuss:
threats to shared governance
attacks on freedom of speech
public policy discourse
and research as resistance
Scholars come to the Congress to resist, to celebrate community, to experiment with traditional and new methodologies, with new technologies of representation.
Together we seek to develop guidelines and exemplars concerning advocacy, inquiry and social justice concerns. We share a commitment to change the world, to engage in ethical work that makes a positive difference.
As critical scholars, our task is to bring the past and the future into the present, allowing us to engage realistic utopian pedagogies of hope.
ICQI provides leadership to demonstrate the promise of qualitative inquiry as a form of democratic practice, to show how qualitative inquiry can be used to directly engage pressing social issues at the level of local, state, national and global communities.
The Congress sponsors the journal International Review of Qualitative Research (IRQR), three book series, and occasional publications based upon the more than 1,000 papers given at the conference each year. It the largest annual gathering of qualitative scholars in the world.
My PhD looks at how bicycles feature in West African girls’ access to secondary education.
This means I read widely about gender, geography, aid and development, education, mobility and innovative research methods.
I’ve been reviewing what has been done so far to help girls get to and from schools on bikes – and this has to lead me to Sport-for-development literature. Which I love!
The field of sport-for-development (S4D) has received significant attention in the last 10 years, legitimizing it as a recognized and critical new genre of scholarship and praxis. The focus of S4D is to engage disadvantaged people and communities in physical activity projects with an overarching aim of achieving various social, cultural, physical, economic, or health outcomes.
Where at the beginning of the 21st century it was difficult to find projects that use sport or physical activity as a specific vehicle for positive change, the number of S4D initiatives that aim to make a difference has grown substantially. One explanation for this escalation is the strong political support for a movement that combines sports associations, aid agencies, development bodies, sponsoring organisations, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)under a single umbrella.
An example of this is my project, which showcases how for the last decade, the collaboration of NGO Village Bicycle Project (my research partner organization) with Stylish Karim Kamara has helped progress local individuals, schools, community groups and education/health organisations by supplying bicycles and bike riding services.
A lovely moment of (research) providence
Often in research, what is being worked on is removed and abstracted from the goings-on in ‘the real-world’.
But not for me this week! This week I had a lovely moment of research providence!
I am currently reading a book on S4D (see image above) which details programs like Football for Peace in the Middle East, Ganar and Deportes para la Vida in the Caribbean, Soldados Nunca Mais which rehabilitates and retrains Brasilian child soldiers using sport, Pacifica Wokabot Jalens (team-based step challenges) programs and other EduSport initiatives.
And it just so happened that my reading of this book coincided with the UN International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP 2021) which was on the 6th of April.
So this made what I am working on even more real and meaningful.
What is the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace?
In recognition of the positive contribution that sport can have on the realization of sustainable development and on the advancement of human rights, 6 April was proclaimed the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP) by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 67/296 in 2013.
Theme:International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP) 2021
The International Day of Sport for Development and Peace 2021 there is an opportunity to recognize the role that sport plays in communities, in individuals’ lives, in building resilience and in the recovery from the pandemic through online and social media activity in the lead up to and on the Day.
The Department of Global Communications, in collaboration with DESA, WHO and the co-chairs of the Group of Friends of Sport for Sustainable Development in New York – Qatar and Monaco – have developed social media and online messaging around the theme of recovery from the pandemic, the importance of equity in that recovery, and what is necessary to build back better for a more resilient and equitable world.
Sport can cross boundaries, defy stereotypes, improve our physical and emotional health, and inspire hope across nations, but we will only be able to get back to this, if we recover better and help end the pandemic by helping ensure everyone is protected from COVID-19 Using the hashtags #SportDay and #OnlyTogether, interested UN entities and external organizations will be able to tailor the theme to closely fit their own specific mandates and activities to demonstrate how sport and physical activity can help build back better and stronger as society begins to reopen and recover, once the pandemic ends.
Sporting analogies, such as “achieving success through teamwork,” and “using a level playing field” can also be incorporated to deliver the important equity and resilience messaging, and sports personalities and organizations can help promote. Teamwork is essential to building back better.
So, let’s help end the pandemic by ensuring everyone is protected from COVID-19. Let’s level the playing field and recover better. #OnlyTogether will we play again.
Objectives
The 2021 International Day of Sport for Development and Peace aims to:
– Reaffirm the place of sport in the recovery from the pandemic and beyond – Foster equity, solidarity, community and team spirit in response to the pandemic – Encourage healthy habits through physical activity and building emotional wellbeing – and inspire hope through sporting analogies.
These are the hashtags for the International Day of Sport this year: #SportDay#OnlyTogether
Our New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) is back on!
The March NM SIG is our first meeting back for 2021. I’m so happy!
Because we are reconvening after the New Year break, we wanted to offer the opportunity for participants to reconnect more directly. So instead of going straight into guest presentations, we decided to have a writing-process open forum to ‘warm-up’ our ideas, discussion and writing-with NM approaches.
So, in this session, we gave breathing space for a topic we all wrestle with: how to ‘write up’ or ‘present’ New Materialisms research.
We invited participants to bring a piece of writing/data/something you are working on to share.
This NM forum encouraged cross-pollination, stimulate new ideas, spark some inspiration, offered some new skills and probed what im/possibilities might emerge for stretching your NM research writing-data.
In this meeting, we asked: How might researchers who are working with New Materialisms ‘write up data’?
We had two readings to get the juices flowing.
Readings:
Somerville, M. (2016) The post-human I: encountering ‘data’ in new materialism, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29:9, 1161-1172, DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2016.1201611
Niccolini, A. D., Zarabadi, S., & Ringrose, J. (2018). Spinning yarns: Affective kinshipping as posthuman pedagogy. Parallax (Leeds, England), 24(3), 324-343.
5 mins warm-up: Delicious Research(er)s. NM SIG March 2021.
March NM SIG notes
Our warm-up NM writing activity was on: Delicious research(er)s. I developed my Delicious Research(er)s warm-up into a 25mins, 100-word worlding – and this is what emerged:
Delicious research(er)s.
Delicious research(er)ing is an open-ended kitchette of inquisitiveness, capabilities, ingredients and alchemy. Folding, passing, mixing and blending: foundational blisters pop into syrupy-sweet intellectual nectar. Flavour(ful) data fragments over tongues, in eyes, and on minds. Delicious researchers are lightning rods for the unexplained. They stand tall: chins up, ears swivelling, noses twitching, eyes roving and skin electrified with buzzing intensity. They dive deep into salty pedogological soups, spin with umami-rolled embodiment, and languish in astringent-infused relationalities of common wor(l)ds. Delicious researchers are sexy, amorous, desirable and magnetic, heated yet ‘cool’ – and prone to spontaneously combust in moments of exquisite flambé rupture.
See images below for some of our other NM lines of flight.
Spinning Yarns. NM SIG March 2021.
Post-human ‘I’. NM SIG March 2021.
Discussing NM problematics. NM SIG March 2021.
NM SIG collaborative notes. NM SIG March 2021.
NM ‘data’-research-writing discussion. NM SIG March 2021.
In anticipation of Griffith’s New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) starting back up very soon for 2021, I’m looking back over what we have done so far.
I am the co-convenor of Griffith’s New Materialism SIG. The aim of the New Materialisms Special Interest Group is to provide asupportive space for students, HDR candidates, ECRs, mid-career and more senior Academics to explore, discuss, experiment and share complex and emerging post-qualitative/post-humanisms ideas, methods and approaches.
I am particularly proud of the diverse and transdisciplinary nature of the current group which includes members from the Health Sciences, Humanities, Education and Psychology and from multiple Universities Australia-wide and internationally.
This SIG is a fertile environment for sharing ideas, research experiences and synergies with multiple projects and possible papers benefiting from the ideas and expertise made available.
We started out with 13 members in 2019 spread evenly across Griffith University and other Universities in South East Queensland (UQ, QUT, Sippy Downs). After four 2019 monthly meetings, interest in the SIG expanded significantly as word spread.
August 2019 – Inaugural meeting
The inaugural session of the Griffith New Materialist (NM) Special Interest Group came together to support researchers and academics to engage more deeply, critically, collaboratively and creatively with NM thinking and practice. This first meeting was semi-structured with the readings and discussion focus being on: The emergence of feminist New Materialisms.
In this second NM SIG meeting, we had a guest presentation by Prof Simone Fullagar and Dr Wendy O’Brien whose book (cowritten with Dr Adele Pavlidis who could not make it), Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery, had just been published. In this meeting, we discussed feminist New Materialisms and how 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.
In this session we had PhD researcher Geraldine Harris share some of her emerging New Materialisms thoughts, approaches and inroads from her research looking at early intervention and prevention strategies for child-centered leadership. This meeting was called Diverse plateaus + visualisations of place-based child-centered leadership and it was a great presentation for many reasons. Geraldine shared some of her unique data analysis visualisations that have helped her think-with, process and communicate the complexity of her work (they were amazing!). We also got to hear about her current PhD musings and emerging NM understandings, as well as tips, challenges and blockages she has experienced using New Materialisms approaches in educational and workplace settings.
Our SIG New Materialisms Garden Retreat was for HDRers only. This was a special event. For the NM Garden Retreat, I invited five New Materialist and Posthumanist PhD friends to a full-day group/workshop in my garden where we collaborated to create and share knowledge. I wanted to get out of the uni confines and have the (literal) time and space to work, think and share more generatively and deeply with others – without time constraints or other pressures. The garden provides an alternative ‘learning context’ that deliberately disrupted and displaced traditional notions about academic knowledge, performances, educational spaces, and who is ‘an expert’. Each participant nominated an NM tropic to share/teach the group. We also had time for writing, teaching-learning discussions and reflection. We had a musician friend of mine come to play and stay for lunch and the afternoon (so awesome!). Everyone brought a lunch plate to share and each participant went home with a garden box bursting at the seams. A wonderful day of collaborative NM work.
Instead of having a guest presenter, we invited everyone to ‘present’ by bringing a piece of data that ‘glows’ for them – a piece they would like to ‘re-turn’ with and share with some suppotive-critical friends. The idea here is that we are all working on different research projects, with different applications and with different data. This was our last meeting before the holidays, so we thought it might be interesting for participants to share a part of their research with others as a way of mining alternative insights – and to give each researcher some fresh ideas and considerations to mull over during the holidays. It was a huge success and wonderful to hear what everyone was working on, wrestling with and how they were thinking-with and processing. Super helpful and inspiring! A great end to our first year as a SIG!
Some people are still away in January. February is busy orientating and getting prepared for the year, so we start our SIGs in April after people have had a chance to settle back in at Uni.
In 2020 we had 6 meetings from March – November and our membership expanded to 40 members – not only Griffith and other Queensland-based universities, but Australia-wide and internationally.
April 2020
I had just returned from my bicycles-for-education PhD fieldwork in West Africaand the other SIG members were keen to hear how it went and what/how I was thinking of moving forward to frame the experience as a posthumanist research project. Great questions! So, to kick off the NM SIG for 2020, I presented my project to date. I outlined what I did during fieldwork and some initial ideas for moving forward and putting to work NM approaches. It was wonderful hearing people ideas, comments and suggestions on possible ways to process and think-with all that had transpired. I brought a lot of (actual) materials and realia from Sierra Leone – and my bike – into the session.
In this session, we had Dr Lazaroo return to her PhD work (two years ago) to untangle the mess in order to make new discoveries. Her project was: Making Noise: An Ethnography of a Community Performance Project between Vulcana Women’s Circus and People with Disabilities. In this session, Natalie reflected on her early methodology and locates a poem titles ‘Expressions of longing’ which she wrote in response to NM SIG provocations. This return poem captures the essence of articulations that emerged during her artistic collaboration over a 4-month period of fieldwork with Vulcana Women’s Circus to create a community performance called Stronghold, which involved people with disabilities.
Our presenter (referred to as X) for this session had just submitted her Griffith EPS Master’s thesis two days before this meeting. In this session, X shared some insights, ‘data’ and narrative moments from her latest research project which was an exploration of workplace sexual harassment on teacher identity. Now that X’s Masters was submitted, she was interested in feedback from the group on what resonates and how she might build the project into a PhD using a New Materialisms lens. Specifically, X was keen to explore how the sexual harassment complaint has its own agency and to get feedback from the SIG on how she might approach this. A very unsettling and moving session for all.
For this session, we had the incredible Melbourne-based PlayTank Collective – Alicia Flynn, Sarah Healy and Allie Edwards present a session entitled Lessons from the Play Tank: Adventures in playful scholarship. In this session, we discussed enacting NM theories and how to provide a playful and collaborative space to re-think, re-imagine, re-( ) research for others. We looked at using art education and design as opportunities to create workshops that attended to the joys and curiosities experienced while working/playing together in a material way. A key focus was on collaboration, intentionally responsive and response-able practices. And we had lots of fun playing, making and learning!
For this session, we had Griffith PhD candidate Janis Hanley take us on a creative and analytical exploration of Milieu, Territory, Atmosphere, Agency & Culture. Using written and visual excerpts from her current PhD research-in-progress on the historical Queensland textile industry, Janis provoked us to consider how milieu, chi, concepts of ‘home’ and atmosphere resonated with us and in our research. We did a number of individual and collaborative activities that helped activate and draw out interesting aspects such as how a piano, political graffiti in a factory and participant appreciation of research diagrams reveal new opportunities. We also looked at how conceptions of ‘home’ feature in our own work and life.
For this session, we had our first international guest presenter, A/P Tom Reynolds (Dept of Writing Studies, Uni of Minnesota, USA). Tom’s interested in critical theories of writing instruction, histories of popular literacy, and intersections of literacy and cultural movements. He is currently working on multimodality with his students, who are making group digital videos that advocate for issues. In this session, he shared some ideas (and wanted feedback for) how these projects might involve greater NM engagement with both discursive and non-discursive elements. Hells yeah! Did the SIG have some good ideas on how to do that!
For this session, we held aNew Materialist’s Writing Party!This session provided time and space for thinking-writing-playing and to shift the focus from ‘academic’ reading and presentations into a different positive and exploratory space. Many of us are hard at work writing alone at our desks, so this was an opportunity to come together, share ideas and get some serious NM writing done. I hosted the party – it was close to my birthday so it was an extra academic birthday treat and celebration for me! We had a few fun warm-ups, a few open-ended guided writing activities, and some research-focused timed writing time. We also had time to chat, reflect and share as much or as little as people wanted. Great fun!
For our last session of 2020, we had Patricia Ni Ivor who works in Project Management at RMIT (Melbourne) present a session with the amazing title: Feeling success in project teams: Travelling from the domain ruled by the supreme God-of-Things to the fresh air of Sensation and the Ineffable. Patricia explored the concept of affect as used by Deleuze and Guattari, drawn from Spinoza’s Ethics and the work of Henry Bergson. She outlined the fit between the theoretical paradigm of Self-inquiry (Spinoza’s synergy with eastern spiritual traditions and Bergson’s notions of consciousness) and how the emphasis on embodiment or somatic inquiry reflects the yogic basis of Self-inquiry (central to Patricia’s thesis) and more recent theories in social science, psychology and physical movement studies in art and wellbeing. The participants got to practice with one of Patricia’s self-inquiry/meditation exercises during the session.
During this holiday break, I have sorely missed our New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) monthly meetings. NM is the approach I am using for my bicycle PhD (more specifically Quantum Physicist Karen Barad’s Agential Realism). I thrive on sharing ideas, resources and experiences with this incredible group. In November, we had our last meeting for 2020. We reconvene in March 2021. It feels so far away! I am craving some NM activity. So, I revisited my 2020 NM SIG notes and here’s some of what bubbled up in 100 words. Enjoy, NG.
Worlding: A galaxy of relational encounters
Each month we meet to discuss theory, practice and research. Who knows what might emerge? The bite of elliptical surfboards. How affects have wayward offspring. Stealth(ily) mother-in-laws. Malian master desert musicians. Temporarily captured objects. Run-ins, rangings, ruts and recognitions. The half-life of (could-be) facts. Un(re)learning sentipensanto feminisms. Personalities, prisms, passions and ponderings. Gothic academic co-authored monsters. Atmospheric political graffiti in disused textile factories. A school-child’s unexplained vomit. Women’s business from the paddock to the boardroom. Dynamics, details, disorientations and discoveries. Always something interesting, always something new. Conversations worth having and experiences worth sharing. This is what is remembered.
