The recent ‘material’ or ‘ontological turn’ has informed a new scholarship in (higher) educational research to focus not only on the human and the discursive, but also to include the more-than-human, such as the material, space, atmosphere, breath and nonhuman animals. Posthumanist scholars move beyond the discursive only, and exemplify a posthuman reorientation drawing in particular on philosophers Haraway, Barad, Braidotti, Deleuze and Guattari, none of whom, have made explicit how their poststructuralist and/or posthumanist philosophies should or could be enacted in (higher) education. This leaves the ground open for invention and experimentation. Their philosophies have opened up possibilities to regard the nonhuman as agentic and not politically neutral in knowledge-production, and this includes videorecording practices.

Professor Karin Murris, a visiting scholar from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, will deliver a presentation to share an example of this important shift in educational research. Her presentation will invite the audience to engage with the affective, material and embodied dimensions of meaning-making in literacy education and the complex and ambiguous relationships ‘between’ space, body and text.

To RSVP, please contact Dr. Jeanne Iorio at Jeanne.Iorio@vu.edu.au.