For a posthumanist or agential realist, ‘child’ is constituted by other human and more-than-human relations and this articulation of child subjectivity (‘[the] child’) can cause profound philosophical tensions, dilemmas and misunderstandings. I continue to wonder and be curious about where child studies might turn to next in its exploration of what it means to decentre (the) child human.

In my presentation I re-turn to this complexity by playing with the lenses of the human ‘eye’ and the eye of the camera. In many research projects little attention is paid to the materiality of recording devices used to ‘collect’ data. They are often invisible in what eventually comes to be ‘research data’.

Through a carefully selected video clip of a current research project about multispecies death and dying, the reader/viewer engages with how lenses are used differently in quantitative (child-as-object), qualitative (child-as-subject), and postqualitative (child-as-phenomenon) research. The play with lenses opens up affirmative decolonising possibilities for reconfiguring Adult/child, and Human/more-than-human relationalities.

Biography

Karin Murris (PhD) is Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Oulu (Finland) and Emerita Professor of Pedagogy and Philosophy, University of Cape Town (South Africa). Grounded in academic philosophy, her main research interests are in philosophy in/of education, posthumanist child studies, democratic postdevelopmental pedagogies in (teacher) education, children’s literature and postdigital play. Karin has extensive experience of undertaking a wide range of funded research by national governments, charities, and industry, including Small Matters: An Educational Community Project about Multispecies Death and Dying, Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC), The Post-Qualitative Research in Higher Education Collective, Children, Technology and Play and Decolonising Early Childhood Discourses: Critical Posthumanism in Higher Education.

Her monographs include: Karen Barad as Educator: Agential Realism and Education (2022), The Posthuman Child (2016), and (with Joanna Haynes) Literacies, Literature and Learning: Reading Classrooms Differently (2018), Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy (2012). She is editor of Navigating the Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Terrain Across Disciplines (2021) and Glossary: Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Research Across Disciplines (2022). She is co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Philosophy for Children (2017).

The Posthuman Child Manifesto you can find on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikN-LGhBawQ

Website: www.karinmurris.com