Notes on Contributors
Dandan Cao
completed her Master in Education at Beijing Normal University (2009). She is nearing the completion of her PhD candidate at the University of Waikato (2017-2020). Her research focuses on exploring children’s voices on their experience of touchscreen devices in a cross-cultural context from a dialogic perspective.
Julie Carmel
is a lecturer at RMIT University Melbourne, where she lectures in Early Childhood Education, Inclusive practice and 21st century issues impacting children. Julie is currently undertaking her Doctorate of Education by publication, researching how children with disabilities are framed in the media, with an emphasis on children’s television, through a Derridean lens. Julie is a member of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), where she presented a paper based on her doctoral studies: Association Graduates in Early Childhood Studies (AGECS) and Early Childhood Intervention Australia (Melbourne/Vic branch) (ECIA).
Amanda Crow
is a Senior Lecturer and Early Years course leader at the University of Huddersfield, she is an experienced practitioner and manager having previously worked in a variety of settings. She has worked in higher education for 6 years, working with students on undergraduate and post-graduate programmes. Amanda is currently studying the Doctorate in Education with a research focus on partnership with parents and using digital documentation to facilitate collaborative discussions in early years practice.
Sheena Elwick
is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education (ECE) at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Her PhD study brought together philosophy and empirical data generated with six infants located in three family day care homes to interrogate the concept of infant participation in research. Her research interests include opening up the complexity of educational research with young children; identifying, measuring and improving ECE contributors to the development, learning and wellbeing of children aged under three; and, working with educators in prior-to-school settings to enrich practices and pedagogies.
Nicola Firth
is a Senior Lecturer in Early Years at the University of Huddersfield. She has worked in higher education for 14 years, working with students on undergraduate and post-graduate programmes. Prior to working in higher education Nicola qualified as a Nursery Nurse and worked in early years settings for 13 years as a Nursery Nurse, then Nursery Manager. Nicola is currently studying the Doctorate in Education with a research focus on boys’ underachievement in their early years. Nicola has used a visual pedagogical approach to collect and analyse data with young children.
Amie Hodges
is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Healthcare Sciences, Cardiff University, she is a Sociologist with a previous clinical background healthcare. Amie’s research interests focus around the sociology of health and illness; she uses participatory, visual and creative methods within her work with children, young people and families. She has used dramaturgy to explore the family centred experiences of siblings living in the context of cystic fibrosis.
Laura Jennings-Tallant
is a lecturer and researcher at Bath Spa University, Bath. Her PhD, from the University of East Anglia, was a Bakhtinian analysis of the place and nature of young children’s carnivalesque humour within an early childhood setting. Laura’s current research interests include interdisciplinary perspectives on children’s humour and carnivality.
Liang Li
is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Research interests are cultural-historical studies, infant-toddlers’ education and care, family practices, play and pedagogy, children’s speech development, science, technology and mathematics in early childhood and primary education settings.
Helen Lomax
is Professor of Childhood Studies at the University of Huddersfield. Her research is focused on understanding the everyday lives of children and the development of methods to enable their participation in research. Helen’s publications bring together interests in creative visual methods, visual culture and ethics.
Dawn Mannay
is a Reader in Social Sciences (Psychology) at Cardiff University. Her research interests revolve around class, children and young people, education, identity and inequality; and she employs participatory, visual and creative methods in her work with communities. Dawn was the Principal Investigator on a Welsh Government commissioned project exploring the education of children and young people who are care experienced in Wales. She has worked on projects related to motherhood, health, poverty, migration, arts and heritage funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Welsh Crucible, Wales Millennium Centre and the Economic and Social Research Council. Dawn established a community of practice to improve the educational experiences of children and young people – ExChange: Care and Education. This online resource hosts free-to-access multimodal materials, case studies, and best practice guides to inform key stakeholders with an interest in the education of care experienced children and young people. Dawn edited the books Our Changing Land: Revisiting Gender, Class and Identity in Contemporary Wales (University Wales Press 2016); Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities, and Relationships (Emerald 2018, with Tracey Loughran); Children and Young People ‘Looked After’? Education, Intervention and the Everyday Culture of Care in Wales (University Wales Press, 2019, with Alyson Rees and Louise Roberts); The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods (Sage, 2020, with Luc Pauwels); and wrote the sole authored text Visual, Narrative and Creative Research Methods: Application, Reflection and Ethics (Routledge, 2016). Dawn is committed to increasing the impact of research findings through the use of film, art work, music and a range of other participatory and co-produced multimodal materials.
Rene Novak
has had a strong interest in education for most of his life and has a strong passion for early childhood pedagogy and technology education. Through his Educational journey he gained teaching qualifications in all sectors, a degree in Pedagogy, a degree in Science, and he completed a Master of Education with the University of Waikato theorising the openness of the NZ ECE curriculum. For the last ten years he has been working for BestStart Educare and is currently supporting Tauranga centres as the Professional Services Manager. He is a published PhD candidate with his thesis focusing on developing new methodologies to study the importance of play involving modern digital technology, namely Virtual Reality, as a tool and a method.
Sarah Pink
(PhD, FASSA) is Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Australia. She is also an Associate Director of Monash Energy Institute, International Guest Professor at Halmstad University, Sweden, Visiting Professor at Loughborough University, UK and Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Australia. Sarah is a design anthropologist and expert in innovative ethnographic methodologies. Her books in this field include the long established Doing Visual Ethnography as well as Doing Sensory Ethnography, Advances in Visual Methodology, Visual Interventions and Refiguring Techniques in Digital Visual Research.
Gloria Quinones
is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Research interests are cultural-historical theory, visual methodologies, infant – toddler education, play and pedagogy and emotions.
Bridgette Redder
is Programme Leader of the Postgraduate Diploma of Infant and Toddler Learning and Development at Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand. She is secretary of the Association for Visual Pedagogies and co-leads the New Zealand team of the International Study Social Emotional Early Transitions (ISSEET) research project. Bridgette’s research interests focus on self study, early years, visual morality, answerability and teacher education.
Avis Ridgway
recent adjunct research fellow Faculty of Education, Monash University. Research foci: visual methodology; early childhood social, cultural and historical influences on learning; infant-toddler pedagogy; peer play and teacher education.
Elizabeth Rouse
is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at Deakin University. Her research focusses on early childhood curriculum, pedagogy, professional practice, parent-school-community partnerships, and transition to school. Elizabeth is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA), Early Childhood Australia (ECA) and the European Research Network About Partnerships in Education (ERNAPE). She has published extensively in both academic journals as well as professional texts.
E. Jayne White
is Associate Dean ECE at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor at Western Norway Institute of Applied Science, Norway. She is founding member and current President of Association for Visual Pedagogies (AVP), Editor-in-Chief of the Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (VJEP). Jayne is widely published in fields of ECE philosophy, visual philosophy, pedagogy and methodology, with a particular interest in dialogic theory and the very young. With Professor Carmen Dalli she co-edits the Springer book series Policy and Pedagogy with Under Three Year-Olds: Cross-Disciplinary Insights and Innovations and actively promotes scholarship across these intersecting domains.