ESRI, Manchester Metropolitan University and CREFI, Deakin University present...

Objects, Spaces and Learning International Symposium

Professor Jill Blackmore
Director, Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation

Currently she is working on an ARC research project Redesigning Schools and Leadership, and projects on Resilient Kids and Schools and The Impact of Internationalisation on Teachers Professional Identities and Careers. She is past president of the Australian Association of Research in Education(2002), past Managing Editor of the Australian Educational Researcher, Regional Editor of International Journal of Educational Leadership, on the Editorial Board of British Educational Research Journal, American Educational Research Journal, New Zealand Journal of Educational Leadership, Journal of Educational Administration and History and international review panels of Journal of Education Policy, Globalisation, Societies, Education etc. She undertakes professional development and policy consultancies with professional and community organizations (principal, teacher and parents), government and NGOs (eg Victorian Council of Social Services, Oxfam International), and community organizations. She is on the Post-compulsory Curriculum Committee of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and has been a critical friend in the recent Leadership Development Framework in Victoria and to the AEU Leadership for the 21st Century.

Associate Professor Mary Dixon
Associate HOS (Research and Research Training), Member of the School of Education Executive

A/Prof Mary Dixon is currently Assoc Head of School Research and Research Training at Deakin University. Her research work is focussed on the theorisation of pedagogy and the possibilities of visual data. She draws on work with teachers and students in Melbourne, Singapore, Thailand and Nepal. She comes to this research work from a career as a primary teacher in Melbourne.

Dr Kim Senior
Master of Education Co-ordinator

Kim Senior is a Senior Lecturer (Pedagogy and Curriculum) in the School of Education at Deakin University. She publishes in the area of research methodology and visuality in educational research. Her current research projects include investigating pedagogy in innovative learning environments and cultural institutions. Her latest publication 'Incorrigible and undisciplined lines in visual social research: ways of 'writing' and 'drawing' at the interices' in ACCESS is an examination of hierarchical binaries and a decentring of representational practices in educational research. Her pedagogical theorising is located in classroom based research and draws upon an extensive background in secondary and tertiary teaching/learning in Australia, Japan and Vietnam. She is currently writing a graphic novel 'Indelible Stains: teaching to learn'.

Professor Maggie Mac Lure
Maggie MacLure (MA, DPhil) is Professor of Education. She joined MMU from the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at the University of East Anglia, where she was Professor of Education and Chair of Research.

Professor Liz Jones
Liz has over twenty years experience of teaching in both mainstream and special education. Her research interests include poststructuralist theory; feminist theory; social constructions and deconstructions of 'the child' and 'childhood'.

Dr Rachel Holmes
Rachel Holmes has been a teacher for 19 years, working across the fields of early years, Key Stage 1, further and more latterly higher education. She currently works in the Educational and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University as a Reader within the Centre for Cultural Studies of Children & Childhood.

Dr Christina Mac Rae
Christina has 16 years experience as an early years practitioner and more recently as a researcher into early years practice. Her PhD offers a critique of normative ways of interpreting children's representations in the Early Years classroom, and it examines the practice of child observation and how it serves to frame what we see when we look at young children.