Wow! eBook
Place-space Methodologies (Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Research)
Author(s): Nikki Fairchild (Author)
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: January 27, 2026
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 358 pages
- ISBN-10: 1032802642
- ISBN-13: 9781032802640
Book Description
Place-space Methodologies extends the concepts of place-space and feminist materialist relational time into transdisciplinary philosophy and practice. Drawing from empirical data obtained during extensive research projects, including doctoral study, the book explores the dynamics of English Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) across diverse settings such as classrooms, gardens, and outdoor spaces.
This book employs critical feminist (new) materialist theories and Academic Writing Otherwise to investigate how place-space is a methodological concept that explores the intersections of discourse, history, time, and materiality on human, non-human, and multispecies kin bodies. Place-spaces are also a methodology developed via undisciplined research, research-creation, and walking-with. To illuminate the concepts of place-space and feminist materialist relational time, the book analyses the intricate relationships between young children, practitioners, and their environment. By focusing on English ECEC pedagogy and practice in various settings, including classrooms, gardens, and outdoor spaces, the book goes beyond theoretical discussions. It provides practical implications and articulations, offering tangible takeaways for educators, practitioners, and researchers. It makes use of particular material objects as focal points to synthesise empirical data and theory to enhance clarity and facilitate a deeper comprehension of the nuanced relationships between materiality, space, and pedagogy. This exploration leads to the development of new, expansive understandings of ECEC pedagogies, and readers will gain fresh perspectives on what these pedagogies mean for both young children and practitioners, fostering a broader and more inclusive approach to early childhood education.
This book is essential for educators, practitioners, and researchers both in Early Childhood Education and Care and other transdisciplinary fields. By presenting innovative methodologies grounded in the concepts of place-space, it provides a valuable resource for those seeking to deepen their understanding of ECEC and other transdisciplinary practices. Whether you are a scholar looking for fresh theoretical perspectives or a practitioner aiming to enhance your pedagogy, this book offers a transformative journey into the intricate dynamics of place-spaces and what they offer thinking and practice.
Editorial Reviews
Review
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, USA
This 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, UK
The 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 Australia
Fairchild’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, Norway
As 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
About the Author
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.
