This chapter introduces the co-produced arts-activist resource AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) as an example of how a situated, longitudinal phEmaterialist praxis can attune to and platform ‘what matters’ to young people in the field of... more
This chapter introduces the co-produced arts-activist resource AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) as an example of how a situated, longitudinal phEmaterialist praxis can attune to and platform ‘what matters’ to young people in the field of relationships and sexuality education. Throughout the chapter we invite readers to engage with the post-qualitative concept ‘dartaphact’ which combines data, art and activism (Renold 2018). This concept-method captures and distils our co-produced arts-based praxis of ‘making what matters’ with young people by crafting, communicating and carrying their in/dividual and collective experiences and messages for change into new places and spaces. To bring this concept-method to life, we spotlight the making and mattering of a graffitied ruler-skirt - a dartaphact that takes shape and form across school assemblies, policy forums, protests and youth events. We select three episodes that draw out the different modalities of this art-ful post-qualitative praxis in action: ‘Ruler-touching’ focuses on discursive-material-affective ‘touch’, ‘Ruler-rattle’ attunes to the sonic reverberations of ruler-activisms, and ‘Ruler-swing’ foregrounds movement and dance. Each episode illustrates the way that dartaphacts can operate as posthuman agents of change, by making ‘youth voice’ matter differently in their potential to surface and share matters of concern on some of the most sensitive folds of experience in affirmative, creative, transformative and ethical ways.
Research Interests:
This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and... more
This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
With the current proliferation of images and narratives of girls and girlhood in popular culture, many ‘truths’ about girls circulate with certainty. Amongst the aims of this Special Issue is to examine critically these ‘confi dent... more
With the current proliferation of images and narratives of girls and girlhood in popular culture, many ‘truths’ about girls circulate with certainty. Amongst the aims of this Special Issue is to examine critically these ‘confi dent characterizations’ (Trinh 1989), to trace the social conditions which produce these ‘truths’ along with the public fascination with girls and to analyze critically the eff ects of these ‘truths’ in the lives of young girls. Th e concepts of resistance and agency have been critical to the fi eld of youth studies, sociology of education and school ethnographies (Hall and Jeff erson 1976; McRobbie 1978; Willis 1978) for conceptualizing the relationships between young people and their social worlds. Ground breaking scholarship by McRobbie (2000) challenges the gendered assumptions of political agency articulated in previous theories of subcultures developed in the 1970s and 80s. While feminist poststructuralist work in the 1990s has re-conceptualized agency i...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter explores how a feminist posthuman and new materialism research framework can help us to rethink and rework sexual regulation and harassment in secondary schools. We consider two case studies from our joint research project... more
This chapter explores how a feminist posthuman and new materialism research framework can help us to rethink and rework sexual regulation and harassment in secondary schools. We consider two case studies from our joint research project ‘Feminism in Schools: Mapping Impact in Practice’. Drawing on theoretical and methodological insights from Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad, we outline our ideas of enacting ‘posthuman feminist intra-activist research assemblages’. Using a diffractive lens to bring disparate moments of our research data together, we explore the fleshy materialism of phallogocentric touch, sound, and space. Politically, we engage with Barad’s notion of researcher ‘response-ability’ to consider what can and cannot be spoken about, and what is blocked, re-routed, and transformed in relation to sexualities research in secondary schools.
Research Interests:
I think one of the main turning points for me and my interests in this (feminist) group was when we got loads of the year nine girls (age 13–14) in and we were talking about the normalized cat-calling and the skirt being lifted up and you... more
I think one of the main turning points for me and my interests in this (feminist) group was when we got loads of the year nine girls (age 13–14) in and we were talking about the normalized cat-calling and the skirt being lifted up and you kind of think ‘that happened to me too’. And they’re these thirteen year old little girls and it’s really sad and it’s so common that you just kind of blank it out. But when you see these young girls quite petrified and upset by things, it really sets off a little fire in you and it shouldn’t be tolerated. (Stella, Parkland School, Focus Group) I think that girls have this taught thing to be kind of quiet and if we are upset … if something’s happened to us that we are not happy about we can’t really talk about it we just carry on and I think you kind of realize that when girls are given a platform or even a class room where they can talk about things and they are safe then how much people feel they can say, and that’s important. (Anna, year 11, Parkland School, Focus Group) Feminism has always been incendiary and fiery, spreading and catching through group affects and generating fierce reactions.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This report outlines the key findings and recommendations of the Sex and Relationships Education Expert Panel. This panel was established by the Cabinet Secretary for Education to help inform the development of the future Sex and... more
This report outlines the key findings and recommendations of the Sex and Relationships Education Expert Panel. This panel was established by the Cabinet Secretary for Education to help inform the development of the future Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) curriculum in Wales.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with teen girls living in an ex-industrial town in south Wales (UK), as a vantage point from which to explore what more the gesture might be... more
The chapter focuses on a gut holding mannerism, observed in an improvised movement workshop with teen girls living in an ex-industrial town in south Wales (UK), as a vantage point from which to explore what more the gesture might be telling us. Drawing on Gille Deleuze’s (1993) readings of Leibniz concept of ‘Fold’ as a differential, we speculatively explore scalar orders of time, space and matter. Using a diffractive analysis (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2008) with a transdisciplinary compass we offer three speculative journeys that fold outwards from the gut-holding mannerism: folds of time and place; gender unfolds and gut reactions. By taking the gut holding mannerism as a fulcrum we imagine folds that become larger and larger expanding into space, place and the universe, or become smaller and smaller by focussing on corporeal-movement, psycho-dynamic experiences and the ‘thinking gut’ (Wilson, 2015). We question what more the gut mannerism can illuminate, what more girls can be, and ...
Research Interests:
This report examines the current and future status and development of the Sex and Relationships Education curriculum in Wales and provides a series of recommendations linked to a secondary report which has been presented to the Cabinet... more
This report examines the current and future status and development of the Sex and Relationships Education curriculum in Wales and provides a series of recommendations linked to a secondary report which has been presented to the Cabinet Secretary for Education (Renold and McGeeney 2017).
Research Interests: Sociology and Curriculum
This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and... more
This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and ...
Research Interests:
Enlivened by queer and feminist enactments of new materialist, posthuman and affect theory, this chapter explores what has become possible with speculative pARTicipatory activist encounters with young people, educational practitioners and... more
Enlivened by queer and feminist enactments of new materialist, posthuman and affect theory, this chapter explores what has become possible with speculative pARTicipatory activist encounters with young people, educational practitioners and politicians in the field of gender and sexuality education in Wales (UK). Sparked by a throw-away comment of how some boys use rulers to lift up girls’ skirts, the chapter maps what else a ruler can do through a series of five ‘ruler-skirt risings’. Each rising provides a glimpse into the agency of 'd/artaphacts’ (arts-based research objects) across micro-resonating moments to macro forcefields of change. From fashion activism to curriculum and national policy, every rising takes form and shape to in-form and re-animate how sexism, sexual violence and sexuality education might be felt, noticed and engaged with differently, but never in ways known in advance and always on the move.
Research Interests: Posthumanism, Arts Education, Gender and Sexuality, Gender Equality, Posthumanist Ethics, and 15 moreFeminist activism, Art and Activism, Sex Education, Healthy Relationships, Sexuality education, Brian Massumi, Arts Based Research, Sexualisation of children, Gender Based Violence and Sexual Harassment, Impact of Social Sciences and Humanities, Erin Manning, Sexual and Gender Based Violence, Palgrave Macmillan, Postqualitative inquiry, and Skirt
This article focuses on what bodies know yet which cannot be expressed verbally. We started with a problem encountered during conventional interviewing in an ex-mining community in south Wales when some teen girls struggled to speak. This... more
This article focuses on what bodies know yet which cannot be expressed verbally. We started with a problem encountered during conventional interviewing in an ex-mining community in south Wales when some teen girls struggled to speak. This led us to focus on the body, corporeality and movement in improvisational dance workshops. By slowing down and speeding up video footage from the workshops, we notice movement patterns and speculate about how traces of gender body-movement practices developed within mining communities over time become actualised in girls’ habitual movement repertoires. Inspired by the works of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Erin Manning, a series of cameos are presented: room dancing; the hold; the wiggle; the leap and the dance of the not-yet. We speculate about relations between the actual movements we could see, the in-act infused with the history of place, and the virtual potential of movement.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the... more
ABSTRACT This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the concept of the ‘cwrdd’ – a Welsh word for gatherings made, found and stumbled upon – we explore how our AGENDA cwrdds attune to, nurture and platform a range of micro-political moments across performances and workshops that entangle human and non-human participants. Inspired by Erin Manning’s concept of the ‘more-than’, we illustrate how the cwrdds carry the past-present-future potentials of what has mattered and is mattering to young people.
Research Interests:
What happens when ‘the margin of manouverability’ (Massumi 2015, p.3) in a specific socio-political context is buzzing with promise and possibility? What might some crafty and serious play with the feminist posthuman ethics of research/er... more
What happens when ‘the margin of manouverability’ (Massumi 2015, p.3) in a specific socio-political context is buzzing with promise and possibility? What might some crafty and serious play with the feminist posthuman ethics of research/er reponse-ability (Barad, 2007) cook up in such a conducive soup? This paper shares the pARTicipatory praxis that informed the making of ‘AGENDA: A Young People’s Guide to Making Positive Relationships Matter’ (Renold, 2016). AGENDA is a 75 page youth-activist bi-lingual (Welsh-English) interactive resource co-created with and for young people in Wales to address gendered and sexual violence. Crafted with an affirmative cut and nurturing a run-a-way praxis that secretes its own co-ordinates, AGENDA invites a care-ful re-mattering of ‘what matters’ when it comes to conventional healthy relationships education. The paper offers a careful cartography of how AGENDA unfolded as a lively resource that continues to matter as it connects to policy and practi...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Future Studies, Queer Studies, Sociology of Children and Childhood, Participatory Research, and 15 moreAnger, Posthumanism, Feminist Philosophy, Sexual Violence, Gender and Sexuality, Social Activism, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Multidisciplinary, Trauma, Postindustrialism, Futures, Arts Based Research, Erin Manning, Postqualitative inquiry, and Post Qualitative Research
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Sociology, Psychology, Gender Studies, Posthumanism, Sexual Violence, and 12 moreGender and Sexuality, Gender, Anti Bullying, Posthumanist Ethics, Arts-Based Participatory Action Research, Karen Barad, Sex and Relationships Education, Sexuality education, Brian Massumi, Arts Based Research, Post Qualitative Inquiry, and Post Qualitative Research
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In her chapter on ‘geographies of desire’, Deborah Tolman (2002: 172) argues how the significance of where girls live and the histories of sexualities in place is a key mediating feature of how girls come to embody and experience their... more
In her chapter on ‘geographies of desire’, Deborah Tolman (2002: 172) argues how the significance of where girls live and the histories of sexualities in place is a key mediating feature of how girls come to embody and experience their sexed bodies and sexuality. This was certainly true of our longitudinal ethnographic research with young people (aged 12–14) living and growing up in an ex-mining semi-rural community in the South Wales valleys (UK). Here, ‘growing up girl’ (Walkerdine et al., 2001) and the subject position of girlfriend and mother loomed large (Ivinson & Renold, 2013a). Girls’ talk was infused with tensions that seemed to bear the signs of industrial legacies of what girls and women were expected to do and be. This was most noticeable in their talk of sexual safety and danger. Often, sexual violence was never far away from talk about coupledom and being ‘in relationship’, as the following two examples go some way to illustrate: Kayleigh (age 13): Dafydd… he pushed me on the track before, he did, coz I wouldn’t go out with him … and then he chucked a glass bottle at me. ER: Because you wouldn’t go out with him? Kayleigh: Yeah … and I just chased after him … ER: Did you? Do you fight back if someone does something like that? Kayleigh: Yeah … when somebody gets the bad side of me, I tell you what, I hit the roof (Individual photo-elicitation interview transcript, school classroom, Cwm Dyffryn)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"The aim of this article is to demystify what we think we are doing when we engage in qualitative analysis. We illustrate the centrality of affect in meaning making, showing how interpretation is always already entangled in... more
"The aim of this article is to demystify what we think we are doing when we engage in qualitative analysis. We illustrate the centrality of affect in meaning making, showing how interpretation is always already entangled in complex affective ethical and political relationalities that circulate in, through, and outside empirical research. We explore research processes as “intra-acting” drawing upon Barad, and develop Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “assemblages,” “intensities,” “territorialization,” and “lines of flight” to analyze research encounters. Taking inspiration from MacLure’s notions of data “hot spots” that “glow,” we explore methodological processes of working with “affective intensities.” In particular, we draw upon our research with teen girls, mapping out how the discursive-embodied category “slut” works as an affective intensity that propels our feminist research assemblage––from the co-creation of “data” in the field to the “data” analysis and beyond."
Research Interests: Coding Theory, Domestic Violence, Gender, Gilles Deleuze, Feminism, and 15 moreDeleuze, Body Image, Girlhood Studies, Children and Youth, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Gender and education, Feminist Research Methods, Critical sociology and politics of education, Counseling, Affect, Dieting, Critical Social Research, Deleuze and Guattari, Femininities and Sexualities, and Contemporary and Historical Sexualisation Debates
Research Interests:
The need to listen to children and young people’s voices has been recognised in a number of recent major policy developments and consultations by central and local government, affecting education, care services, youth justice, leisure and... more
The need to listen to children and young people’s voices has been recognised in a number of recent major policy developments and consultations by central and local government, affecting education, care services, youth justice, leisure and environmental services (Children and Young People’s Unit 2001). Specific departments and programmes have been set up addressing the needs of children and young people and the problems of social exclusion affecting the young (e.g. Children’s Fund 2001). Much of this activity has been linked to concerns about youth violence and involvement in social disorder, but there are also concerns about the safety and protection of children, in the community and when they enter public care, following a number of recent tragedies and scandals which revealed inadequacies in the services intended to protect and care for children (Laming 2003).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This presentation is in critical dialogue with the increasing turn to visual and participatory methodologies in which children are the primary ‘data generating’ agents. It is also in critical dialogue with the visual ethnographic mapping... more
This presentation is in critical dialogue with the increasing turn to visual and participatory methodologies in which children are the primary ‘data generating’ agents. It is also in critical dialogue with the visual ethnographic mapping of everyday lives and identities within a wider cultural context of individualised video diaries and the media gaze that creates and incites a range of visual representations of the confessional and psychologised performative self (e.g. reality TV). To engage with these debates we draw upon on an on-going longtitudinal ESRC-funded research project, (Extra)Ordinary Lives: Children’s Everyday Relationship Cultures In Public Care. This is one of four demonstrator projects within the Qualitative research node (Qualiti) of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. The central methodological aim for the ‘(Extra)ordinary Lives’ project1 was to develop a research environment for a small number children and young people aged between 10 and 21 where they could choose their own level of involvement and their own methods to record and represent aspects of their lives and identities through making available a range of experimental methods from auto-ethnographic to activity based techniques (e.g. film-making, photographic diaries, music productions, visual/textual diaries, scrap-books/collages, audio and visual guided tours and, unexpectedly, car conversations). These research activities, combined with our reflexive participatory approach, have proven to be quite productive in generating a rich and diverse assemblage of multimodal representations of everyday lives and identities (in-context, in-history, inculture, and in-imagination). Towards the end of the fieldwork, we were especially struck by the synergy between young people’s reflexive and shifting engagement with the media in recording and representing them-selves and what we (the research team) were learning more widely about their performed and edited subjectivities throughout the fieldwork in a range of ways (from reflexive discussions of edited footage, to dis/engagements with particular visual technologies). It is this diverse and changing relationship of how young people differently took-up the opportunity to generate mediated representations of the self that takes centre stage in this presentation with a view to critically engaging with research that incorporates multimedia methods in ethnographic explorations of children’s cultures and social identities.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter focuses on the use of mobile research methods in an ethnographic and participatory research project that explored the everyday lives of a group of young people in public care. It is informed by a broader emergent field within... more
This chapter focuses on the use of mobile research methods in an ethnographic and participatory research project that explored the everyday lives of a group of young people in public care. It is informed by a broader emergent field within the social sciences — mobilities research, which focuses attention on journeys themselves as important in place-making practices, and discusses the affordances of mobile research methods in generating rich understandings of young people’s everyday lives. Two different mobile methods employed in the research, ‘guided’ walks and car-journey interactions, are drawn upon to discuss the qualities of mobile research interactions. ‘Guided’ walks involved a young person walking with a researcher, leading the researcher through locales of significance to them that formed part of their everyday local geographies. The car journey interactions were generated as researchers and participants travelled together to and from designated fieldwork sites, journeys that formed part of the regular routines set up to facilitate young people’s access to fortnightly project sessions. Research contexts, encounters and exchanges are explored in the chapter, and the value of utilising mobile methods is discussed in relation to the illumination of the ordinariness of the everyday when exploring young people’s mundane geographies, everyday lives and localities, and in enabling young people to pace the sharing of their narratives in the exploration of more intimate or sensitive subjects.
Research Interests:
'Promise Through the Lens of Time' is a multimedia exploration of promise as a pertinent futures issue, presented through film and live performance. It draws on theory, art practice and empirical research in architecture,... more
'Promise Through the Lens of Time' is a multimedia exploration of promise as a pertinent futures issue, presented through film and live performance. It draws on theory, art practice and empirical research in architecture, education, health, law and sociology. It is a collaboration between members of Pursuing Futures, a multi-disciplinary group of academics and artists based in Cardiff.
Research Interests:
© Emma Renold, Jessica Ringrose and R. Danielle Egan 2015. This volume presents a ground-breaking collection of interdisciplinary chapters from international scholars which complicate, and offers new ways to make sense of, children’s... more
© Emma Renold, Jessica Ringrose and R. Danielle Egan 2015. This volume presents a ground-breaking collection of interdisciplinary chapters from international scholars which complicate, and offers new ways to make sense of, children’s sexual cultures across complex political, social and cultural terrains.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Education, Media Studies, Children and Families, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 15 moreEarly Childhood Education, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Anthropology and Sexuality, History of Sexuality, Feminism, Masculinities, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Girlhood Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Sexuality Studies, Human Sexuality, Children, Childhood studies, and Sexualization
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education showcases scholarly work over a wide range of educational topics, contexts and locations within gender and sexuality in education. The series welcomes theoretically informed... more
Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education showcases scholarly work over a wide range of educational topics, contexts and locations within gender and sexuality in education. The series welcomes theoretically informed scholarship including critical, feminist, queer, trans, postcolonial, and intersectional perspectives, and encourages creative and innovative methodological approaches. Proposals dealing with critical policy analysis, as it relates to gender and sexuality studies in education, are also invited. The series is committed to publishing scholarly monographs, both sole and co-authored, and edited collections.
This chapter offers a confessional account of an inexperienced researcher embarking an ethnographic fieldwork to investigate children's constructions of their gender and sexual identities within the primary school. Using... more
This chapter offers a confessional account of an inexperienced researcher embarking an ethnographic fieldwork to investigate children's constructions of their gender and sexual identities within the primary school. Using metaphors from the world of science fiction, I explore how, during ...
Research Interests:
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Role of ‘Gender’ in Research on School Bullying Bullying as Normative Gendered ‘Performance’? Boys and Normative Violence Boys and the Performative Cycle of Normative ‘Hard’, Violent... more
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Role of ‘Gender’ in Research on School Bullying Bullying as Normative Gendered ‘Performance’? Boys and Normative Violence Boys and the Performative Cycle of Normative ‘Hard’, Violent Masculinity Normative Femininity: Girls as ‘Covert Bullies’ The Performative Cycle of Normative ‘Indirectly Aggressive’ Femininity Conclusion Useful Resources References