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Network Members

Dr Vinnarasan Aruldoss (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)

Is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London working on the ECR-funded Connectors Study in India. He completed his PhD in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh looking at early childhood education and children’s everyday experiences in three different pedagogical settings in Tamil Nadu in South India. He has published papers on early childhood policy, creative learning spaces, children’s participation in early years, and childhood and politics.

Dr Simone Bignall (Political Sciences, Flinders University, South Australia)

Simone Bignall is a Continental Philosopher and Senior Lecturer in Politics. She is based in the office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement at Flinders University of South Australia. Her research interests concern postcolonial political philosophy, often informed by her active participation in anticolonial movements for social transformation. The politics of listening is a prominent theme within her published work.  This draws especially from the Continental philosophical lineage from Spinoza to Deleuze with special focus on theories of embodiment and agency, dispossession and self-declension, feminism, psychoanalysis and ethics. Simone’s publications include Postcolonial Agency, 2010; Deleuze and the Postcolonial (with P.Patton), 2010; Agamben and Colonialism (with M. Svirsky), 2012; and Deleuze and Pragmatism (with S. Bowden and P.Patton), 2014. She is currently editing Posthuman Ecologies and Deleuzian Philosophy (with R. Braidotti), forthcoming 2018; and she is completing a monograph titled Excolonialism: Ethics after Enjoyment.

Dr Neil Cocks (English Literature; University of Reading, UK)

Professor Hilary Footitt (Modern Languages; University of Reading, UK)

Is Research Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies of the University of Reading, UK. She was the Principal Investigator for the AHRC ‘Languages at War’ project (2008-2011), which explored the ways in which foreign languages became part of the institution of war, in intelligence, in military-civilian relations, and in displaced communities. She is currently the PI for the AHRC project ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs’ (2015-2018), which focuses on the role of languages and cultural knowledge in the policies and practices of development NGOs.

Dr Nick Lee (Centre for Education Studies, University of Warwick, UK)

Dr. Nick Lee is Director of Research at CES. He has more than 30 publications across the fields of Science Studies, Education and the Sociology of Childhood including articles in The Lancet: Infectious Disease, Science, Technology and Human Values and Sociology. In his most recent book ‘Childhood and Bio-politics: Climate change, life processes and human futures’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) he examines relationships of power, youth and generation in the contexts of biotechnological innovation and climate change. He has attracted research funding from ESRC, BBSRC, MRC, European Neuroscience and Society Network, Department for Children, Schools and Families and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He is ELSA lead for Warwick’s Institute for Synthetic Biology. He has recently reported on social responses to antibiotic resistance for a global hygiene corporation and on the prospects of today’s 5-15 year olds to 2050 for the UK Cabinet Office.

Professor Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (English Literature; University of Reading)

Dr Belinda MacGill (University of South Australia, South Australia)

Dr Jessica Medhurst (English Literature; Newcastle University, UK)

Professor Daniel Monk (Law; Birkbeck College, University of London, UK)

Is a Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London. His research has explored a wide range of issues relating to families, children, education and sexuality. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and socio-legal perspectives his work locates these issues within broader political and cultural contexts, engages critically with discourses of ‘children's rights’, and attempts to create a dialogue between 'child law' and the 'sociology of childhood'.

He is currently undertaking research funded by the Nuffield Foundation about siblings in public law proceedings. See: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/siblings-contact-and-law-overlooked-relationship

For publications, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/law/our-staff/monk/publications

Dr Johanna Motzkau (Psychology; The Open University, UK)

Dr Kyoko Murakami (Dept of Psychology, Copenhagen University, Denmark)

Dr Sevasti-Melissa Nolas (Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)

Is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study. Melissa has an interdisciplinary background in the social sciences and has been carrying out ethnographic research since 2000 focusing on human agency, participation, and everyday life. Previous research has engaged critically with the topics of child, youth and family welfare, well-being, and social support. Her current research explores the relationship between childhood and public life and political activism across the life course. She has a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences.

Dr Sara Ramshaw (Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada)

Sara Ramshaw was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in 2017 following previous appointments at the University of Exeter (England) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) (Northern Ireland).  After receiving her B.A. (Hons) from the University of Toronto, Sara obtained both a LLB and a LLM from the University of British Columbia. She then clerked at the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) and was called to the Bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2000. Sara worked for the Ministry of the Attorney General at the Superior Court of Justice, Family Court in Toronto before commencing postgraduate studies at the University of London (Birkbeck College) in England under the supervision of Professor Peter Fitzpatrick. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2007, examined the legal regulation of jazz musicians in New York City (1940-1967) through the lens of poststructural theory informed by feminism, critical race theory and critical improvisation studies. During the 2008-9 academic year, Sara was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (ICASP) project in Montreal. Her monograph, Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore, published by Routledge in 2013, was nominated for the 2014 Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Hart Book Prize.

More recently, Sara was the principal investigator of a large UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project, entitled Into the Key of Law: Transposing Musical Improvisation. The Case of Child Protection in Northern Ireland. Sara has published widely in numerous international journals and given invited talks throughout the Commonwealth and beyond. She has also held Visiting Fellowships at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School (Summer 2017) and the Center for Globalization and Cultural Studies at the University of Manitoba (Spring 2009).

Sara co-leads the Translating Improvisation Research Group (QUB) and is a member of Science, Culture and the Law at Exeter (SCuLE, UK) and the AHRC Legal Materiality Research Network (UK).

Dr George Revill (Geography, The Open University, UK)

Wig Sayell (Community Arts Outreach and Creative Arts, Banbury and Bicester College, Oxford Brookes University)

I am an artist photographer and arts tutor for delivering community projects in Oxfordshire. Presently I am also the Course Leader for BA (hons) Creative Arts and Design Practice in Banbury for Oxford Brookes University.  In 2017, I  organised and led a ‘Grants for the Arts’ Arts Council funded project titled ‘The Workhouse Community Project’, where a group of EU citizens living in Banbury worked with me to create new artwork based on personal experiences and an engagement with overlooked aspects of British history. I have previously worked as an arts tutor at Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea, and with vulnerable children and carers with the 'Collective Vision' project also funded by the Arts Council and through borough council funding (2007-2008).  I have an extensive exhibition record, this included shows produced in association with University of Reading and Ladybird Books (2012), University of Aberdeen (2014) and University of Oxford (Pitt Rivers Museum) (2014).

Dr Wine Tesseur (Modern Languages; University of Reading, UK)

Is a postdoctoral research assistant on the AHRC project ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs’. Her primary research interest in is language and translation policy at NGOs. Her doctoral dissertation focused on translation policies at the human rights NGO Amnesty International and on how translation and translation policy impact on an organisation's message and voice as it is spread around the world. In addition to translation studies, Wine has an interest in sociolinguistics, development work, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Dr Christos Varvantakis (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)

Is an anthropologist, working as researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has a BA in Sociology (University of Crete, Greece), an MA in Visual Anthropology (Goldsmiths, UK) and a PhD (Freie Universität, Germany). His research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, politics and urban environments, as well as on visual and multimodal research methodologies. He has carried out ethnographic research in Greece, India and Germany over the last 15 years. Christos is a founding member and the Head of Programming of Ethnofest, an international festival of ethnographic film held in Athens, Greece every year.