Fikile Nxumalo

I am faculty in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, where I direct the Childhood Place Pedagogy Lab. My scholarship focuses on reconceptualizing place-based and environmental education within current times of ecological precarity. This scholarship is rooted in perspectives from Indigenous knowledges, Black feminist geographies, and critical posthumanist theories. My research and pedagogical interests are informed by my experiences growing up in eSwatini and working as a pedagogist with children and educators in North American settler colonial contexts. My research and practice collaborations include the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab, the Common Worlds Research Collective, the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory and Planet Texas 2050. My latest book, Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2019) examines the entanglements of place, environmental education, childhood, race, and settler colonialism in early learning contexts.