Mindy Blaise
Dr. Mindy Blaise, before coming to VU, was a kindergarten teacher in the US and has worked in American, Australian, and Hong Kong universities. Mindy’s scholarship relates to engaging with ‘postdevelopmentalism' and post empiricism to reconfigure early childhood research, teaching, and curriculum. A large part of this work involves ‘grappling-with’ feminist practices that are useful for interrupting the notion of the developmental child. Mindy is a founding member and principal researcher of the Common World Childhoods Research Collective that promotes interdisciplinary research that focuses upon more-than-human childhood relations and pedagogies. Mindy publishes across both early childhood education and gender studies. Her book, Playing it straight! Uncovering gender discourses in an early childhood classroom (Routledge) brings together feminism, queer theory, and early childhood to rethink childhood, teaching, and learning. Her most recent book, The SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning, was co-edited with Liz Brooker and Susan Edwards and showcases how postdevelopmentalism is taken up in early childhood.