Place-space Methodologies

Nikki Fairchild is an Associate Professor in Creative Methodologies and Education in the School of Education, Languages, and Linguistics, University of Portsmouth. Her research is theoretically informed by critical feminist (new) materialist and posthumanist theory-praxis and has two bifurcations. The first is employing research-creation and creative methodologies to provide different ways to disturb and enact knowledge production. The second focuses on creative ways to activate and entangle relationality with gender, place-spaces, time, temporality, childhoods, and education. She is on the Editorial Boards of Gender and Education, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, and Norland Educare Research Journal.

• ● Entry point ● Theoretical Underpinning ● Place-space methodologies ● Mats ● Tables ● Doors ● Alcoves, window ledges and crevices ● ECEC Gardens ● Forest, beaches and wild spaces ● Exit point

This transversal and a-hierarchical text calls for readers to explore and experiment within different place-spaces and worldings. Creatively structured encounters with mats, knots, tables, string figures, ice caves, doors, gardens, trees and much more prompt to do inquiry (and living) differently and with the kin. Mirka Koro, Professor of Qualitative Research, Arizona State University, USAThis is a joyous, absorbing, creative and compelling book. It will change the way interdisciplinary scholars think about space and place. The concept of ‘place-spaces’ offers new, hopeful, caring ways of thinking about research methods, methodologies and ethics.John Horton, Professor, University of Northampton, UKThe situated stories that Fairchild tells shows readers how a living methodology might sound and feel. There is much to learn and appreciate from this book and it is a welcomed interruption to ‘business as usual’ in early childhood environmental education.Mindy Blaise, Professor and Director, Centre for People, Place, and Planet, Edith Cowan University, Western AustraliaFairchild’s deep-dive into place-space offers rich theorizations on the interrelations between concepts of place, space, and time, applied to the context of ECEC and the broader political and planetary moment. As an ECEC researcher, I appreciate how she transforms everyday material details such as windowsills, doorways, and mats into expansive vistas of ethical complexities and possibilities to think and 'walk-with'. Teresa K. Aslanian, Professor of Education, University of South-Eastern Norway, NorwayAs the author states; this book is a ‘beginning’ and also a ‘middle-ing’ for thinking about place and space. That is what makes it unique and essential reading for those interested in academic and authentic reflections in turbulent times, when we need to make multimodal meanings with our bodies, space, matter, objects and ideas to make sense of the moments we are living in.Nicola Yelland, Professor of Early Childhood Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia