The Anthropocene has emerged as a figure of uncertain and precarious futures, requiring new kinds of thought and action. Yet, childhood studies has not engaged deeply with the Anthropocene. Dr. Pacini-Ketchabaw will engage with responses to the Anthropocene within childhood studies and argue that we need to be attentive to place, to engage with educators and children, to adopt a critical response to address the social and environmental legacies of settler colonialism. “In this talk, I will introduce ‘common world pedagogies’ as an alternative perspective to neocolonial environmental stewardship approaches, and aspire to reconfigure colonial relations between childhood and nature,” explains Dr. Pacini-Ketchabaw.

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw is a professor in early childhood education at Western University. Her academic background in early childhood education and her current work as a pedagogista are combined with insights from feminist theory, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, and cultural geography. Her interdisciplinary research with educators and young children explores the possibilities of common world pedagogies. These pedagogies support children to pay close attention to place, to other species, and to how we all got to be in the space we share. Dr. Pacini-Ketchabaw is interested in how we might learn with other species in the colonial spaces we co-inhabit. She can be contacted at: vpacinik@uwo.ca