Nikki Fairchild University of Portsmouth, UK

Nikki Fairchild is Associate Head (Research and Innovation) in the School of Education and Sociology at the University of Portsmouth (UK). Her research interests include post-humanist and new materialism feminist theorizing which have been employed to articulate more-than-human subjectivities in the Early Years. Her PhD thesis explored more-than-human subjectivities with Early Years Teachers and explored the ways in which these are linked to a fluid and distributed understanding of their professional identity. Her recent research centres on place/space in classrooms and gardens. This has been enacted using walking-with methodologies through which she has become interested in the work of Indigenous and Black scholars writing about settler colonialism. This work has encouraged her to think through the impact of Eurocentric colonial practices in English ECEC and consider how this intersects with post-humanist and new material feminist thinking. Dr Fairchild is also part of any International collective which challenges the knowledge practices in conference spaces. The collective enacts arts-based research-creation workshops at conferences to consider how human, non-human and other-than-human bodies interact. The collective has recently been awarded a Special Commendation for the BERA Anna Craft Creativities in Education 2020 Prize.