I completed my PhD in 2019 and being a member of AASA since 2010, has supported my thinking, writing and research. My research is sustained by a commitment to animal activism and ecological justice and seeks to understand how power structures are reinforced through the political, social and cultural effects of education. Recent research aligns three disciplines: early childhood education, environmental education, and human-animal studies where connections and disjunctions of children’s relations with animals in family homes and early childhood education are researched within a critical posthuman and postqualitative theoretical framework. In this research the complex relations with children, animals and environments provide a space for ethical inquiry that troubles how animal species are socially constructed, culturally reproduced and positioned in early childhood education. Postqualitative methodologies invite creative practices in her research including theorising with critical posthumanist, ecofeminist, postcolonial and new materialist philosophies. Tracy’s research contributes to wider understandings about the significance of early childhood education in terms of relationality with the human and the more-than-human. Tracy is the co-editor of the animal relations section of the International ChildhoodNatures Research Handbook published by Springer in 2019.
As an early career researcher my focus is now on writing and grants that advocate for animals in education, so the topics in this seminar are applicable to my current goals.
Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA) Online Conference
In this masterclass, Professor Danielle Celermajer, author of the critically acclaimed work Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future (Penguin 2021), will explore creative non-fiction as an approach in making sense of more-than-human worlds. Participants will have an opportunity to read sections of Summertime, and also to workshop their own creative non-fiction writing or experiment with this form.
Are you new to animal studies research? Do you grapple with current theoretical debates – such as intersectionality and decolonial approaches? Do you wonder how and where to publish? If you would like to understand the basics of the publication process, from pitching an article idea to responding to peer review and get advice on what’s possible when working with non-traditional outputs – such as visual art and creative writing – join us at the master class: Tools for Animal Studies Research.
This interactive online event, presented by the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA), is aimed at higher degree and early career researchers interested in animal studies. You will have an opportunity to hear from scholars doing innovative work in the field and ask questions.