The PESA 2023 conference theme reflects our current times of radical uncertainty at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic and resulting economic downturn have brought suffering, loss and material hardship to millions of teachers, families and children around the world. At the same time, people continue to experience differently the ongoing climate emergencies, large-scale ecological and environmental disasters, mass migrations and displacement in the world.
However, such times also create opportunities for new connections to be forged. The 51st PESA Annual Conference will create such an opportunity for people to come together, to reaffirm our sense of community, agency, creativity and commitment to educational philosophy and theory. It will allow us to explore ways of co-creating more livable, equitable, caring and welcoming educational and philosophical places and spaces. In light of the multiple existential, social and environmental issues that we face, the PESA 2023 conference will centre on the notion of being together in/with place.
Keynote Speakers:
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Linda Tuhiwai Smith Dr Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Distinguished Professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatane New Zealand. She is Māori and from Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou and Tuhourangi tribes. Distinguished Professor Smith is known internationally for her work on Decolonising research methodologies, Indigenous education and kaupapa Māori. She was the founding Co-Director of Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga the Māori Centre of Research Excellence and has held several senior academic roles at the University of Auckland and Waikato University. She has served on the Health Research Council, the Marsden Fund Council, the Royal Society of New Zealand Council and is currently Deputy Chair of Council of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. She is a Fellow of the American Education Research Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and an Honorary International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2023 she was elected to the US Bational Academy of Science as an International member. Dist. Professor Smith is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Her publications include Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999, 2012, 2021) Zed Books, The International Handbook of Indigenous Education co-editted with Elizabeth McKinley (2017) Springer, and A Civilising Mission? The Making of New Zealand’s Native School System 1867-1969 (2001) co-editted with J.Simon, F.Cram, M. Hoheepa and S.McNaughton. AUP. She has recently published five children’s picture books inspired by her research on Māori strategies for healing from trauma. |
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Gert Biesta From The Point Where I Stand To The Place Where I Can Be Found: The Critique Of Perspectival Reason As Philosophy For Education Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy in the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. In 2023 he was appointed to the Education Council of the Netherlands, the advisory body of the Dutch government and parliament. He writes about the theory of education, the philosophy of social and educational research, and education policy. Recent books include World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (Routledge 2021) and The New Publicness of Education: Democratic Possibilities after the Critique of Neo-Liberalism (Routledge 2023; co-edited with Carl Anders Säfström). |
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Anna Sparrman Unlearning The Child: an ontological politics outlook Anna Sparrman is Professor in Child Studies and Deputy Head at the interdisciplinary Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. She is also Visiting Professor in child culture at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. Sparrman is an interdisciplinary child studies researcher exploring and challenging taken for granted theoretical ideas about children, especially as developed through the notion of child studies multiple. She undertakes both theoretical and empirical investigations of social and cultural norms and values enacted by children and adults in relation to visual culture, sexuality, parenthood, consumer culture, children’s cultural heritage and child culture. She has a special interest in the relationality between human and non-human agency drawing on elements of both Science and Technology Studies (STS) and posthumanism. Her article Through the Looking Glass: Alice and Child Studies Multiple (2020) explores preconceptions about the child which researchers carry with them when conducting research. Other publications include: focusing on listening to child absence (2022); pure and impure critiques of Disney (2022); children’s cultural heritage (2022); and, in collaboration with 32 researchers, a playful theoretical exploration of possible new concepts in child studies (2023). Sparrman serves and has served as a board member of the Swedish Arts Council, the North American based Childism Institute, and on the editorial board of Childhood: a journal of global child research. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Centre for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and at the Axel Munthe Institute on Capri. Her most recent Swedish Research Council funded project is: Children’s cultural heritage - the visual voices of the archive. |
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Nesta Devine Nesta Devine is a Professor of Education at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) New Zealand. Her work spans education policy and theory, prison education, Pasifika teachers and school exclusion. It aims to disrupt the structures and pedagogical assumptions that can lead to inequities for different groups of learners in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She is the former president of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) and Associate Editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT). |
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Michael A. Peters Refuge and Resilience: Being-together in a post-apocalyptic era Michael A. Peters is Distinguished Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University, Faculty of Education, PRC, Emeritus Professor in Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Senior Research Fellow at Auckland University (NZ), and Research Associate in the Philosophy Program at the University of Waikato (NZ). He was the editor-in-chief of Educational Philosophy and Theory for 25 years and founding editor of several international journals including The Beijing International Review of Educational Research (with Prof Xudong Zhu). Michael was made a Fellow of NZ Academy of Humanities, The Royal Society of NZ and PESA. He was also awarded honorary doctorates from State University of New York and the University of Aalborg (Denmark). He is currently working a couple of books on apocalyptic philosophy. |
Public Lecture: What is ‘Indigenising the academy’ and why attempt it?
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Te Kawehau Hoskins Te Kawehau Hoskins affiliates to the people of Ngāti Hau in Whakapara, a community located north of the Whangārei district. She is an associate professor and Ihonuku Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori at Waipapa Taumata Rau The University of Auckland. She leads conversations about Indigenisation in university settings and has expertise in qualitative social and educational research, the politics and ethics of Indigene-settler relations, and kaupapa Māori education. |
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Alison Jones Alison Jones is a Pākehā educational researcher and a professor in Te Puna Wānanga, the School of Māori and Indigenous Education at Waipapa Taumata Rau The University of Auckland. Alison has published two award-winning books with Kuni Kaa Jenkins: He Kōrero: Words Between Us : First Māori–Pākehā Conversations on Paper (2011), and Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds. Her book This Pakeha Life: An Unsettled Memoir was shortlisted for the General Non-Fiction Ockham Book Award in 2021. She writes and teaches in the field of Māori-Pākehā relations prior to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and in modern educational sites. She is interested in the politics of friendship. |