Diffracting Bag Lady Stories and Kinship: Cartogra-ph-ying and Making-With Others in MoreThan-Human Affirmative Spaces

Liz Latto; Julie Ovington; Louise Hawxwell; Jo Albin-Clark; Phillipa Isom; Sharon Smith; Sarah Ellis; Jo Fletcher-Saxon

doi:10.18733/cpi29657

Authors

Liz Latto University of Edinburgh https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2307-454X
Julie Ovington University of Sunderland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3734-8364
Louise Hawxwell Edge Hill University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1928-8684
Jo Albin-Clark Edge Hill University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6247-8363
Phillipa Isom https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8423-5269
Sharon Smith University of Birmingham https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1556-367X
Sarah Ellis University of Sunderland https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8691-3182
Jo Fletcher-Saxon University of Sunderland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2731-3261

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29657

Abstract

Underpinned by Le Guin’s (2019) conceptualisation of bag ladies along with feminist materialism and posthumanist ways of thinking and doing, the authors examine the ways in which their bag lady storytelling became entwined with an online reading and ultimately kinship.

Author Biographies

Liz Latto, University of Edinburgh

Liz Latto is a Teaching Fellow in the Institute for Education, Community and Society (IECS), at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to this, she worked as a primary school and early year’s teacher within various local authorities in Scotland for 15 years. Liz is currently completing her doctorate. Her research draws on posthuman and feminist materialist theories to investigate the influences that have an effect on practitioners’ perceptions of their professional identities. Her research interests include using posthuman, relational lenses to understand how structures of inequality are embedded and perpetuated within society.

ORCHID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2307-454X

Julie Ovington, University of Sunderland

Julie Ovington is a Lecturer at the University of Sunderland. This work follows on from a career in family support within communities and in Nursery and Infant schools. Julie completed her doctorate at Northumbria University in 2019. Her thesis explored the affect of school readiness in the class-room based on the lived experiences of two-year-old children. The study drew on a range of lenses including materialism and posthumanism.

Louise Hawxwell, Edge Hill University

Louise Hawxwell is a Senior Lecturer in primary Education at Edge Hill University, Lancashire. Her research explores how relationships with the outdoors are entangled with the materiality of memories, childhood outdoor experiences, teacher educator practices and beliefs. She uses common-world, posthumanist, and new materialist lenses to frame her work.

Jo Albin-Clark, Edge Hill University

Jo Albin-Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Early Education at Edge Hill University. Following a teaching career in nursery and primary schools, Jo has undertaken several roles in teaching, advising, and research in early childhood education. She completed her doctorate at the University of Sheffield in 2019. Her thesis explored documentation practices in early childhood education using posthuman and feminist materialist theories. Her research interests include observation and documentation practices, methodological collaboration, and research creation using a posthuman lenses. A central theme in all her work has been teachers’ embodied experiences of resistance to dominant discourses.

Phillipa Isom

Philippa Isom is a Lecturer at Massey University and at the University of New Zealand in teacher education. She is from Aotearoa, New Zealand. She is interested in alternative ways of knowledging in educational philosophy including the use of fiction as a thinking practice.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8423-5269

Sharon Smith, University of Birmingham

Sharon Smith is a 3rd year doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham. She is also a mum to a 16-year-old daughter who has Down syndrome. Her experiences as a parent of a disabled child are at the heart of her research interests. Her thesis studies how the subjectivity of parents of disabled children has an impact on inclusion. She is currently grappling with how posthuman theories make sense of relationships with people who have cognitive disabilities and who are sometimes seen as less-than-human. Her doctoral research is supported by a 3-year BERA Doctoral Fellowship awarded in 2019.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1556-367X

Sarah Ellis, University of Sunderland

Sarah Ellis is a Health and Social Care HE Lecturer at the University of Sunderland. Her research interests include socio-cultural concepts of micro to macro identity work, how discourses of the materialities of difference are constructed, and what their affects are on legislative and policy creation processes at national and international level.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8691-3182

Jo Fletcher-Saxon, University of Sunderland

Jo Fletcher-Saxon is a doctoral student at the University of Sunderland and a senior leader in further and college-based higher education. Her research interests include building the capacity for and studying the impact of teacher research in sixth form colleges. She enjoys exploring her work through a feminist and posthuman lens.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2731-3261