Chair:

Hanne Haavind, Adjunct Professor, Centre for Women and Gender Research (Kvinnforsk)UiT, The Arctic University of Norway
Professor, Department of PsychologyUniversity of Oslo E-mail: hanne.haavind@psykologi.uio.no
Website: http://www.sv.uio.no/psi/english/people/aca/hanneha/

 

 

 Keynotes:

Professor Harriet
Bjerrum Nielsen		 Professor Julie
McLeod		 Professor Liv Mette
Guldbrandsen		 Professor Rachel
Thomson		 Professor Dorte
Marie Søndergaard

 

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, Professor of Gender Research 

Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, Norway
E-mail: h.b.nielsen@stk.uio.no,
Website: http://www.stk.uio.no/english/people/aca/harrietn/ 

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen was originally trained in the disciplines of language and literature but has for several decades dedicated her research to understanding the significance of gender for children and young people's psychosocial development in a perspective of social change. Her main theoretical approach has been psychoanalytically inspired perspectives on subjectivity as socially situated and historically and biographically formed. Methodologically this has lead to a special interest in the dimensions of temporality. She has done classroom studies, ethnographic observations and interviews within a frame of qualitative longitudinal and generational designs. Her latest project included a longitudinal study of one school class where the students were followed from they were 7 to 23 years old.

How can we describe and understand gendered patterns of behaviour in classrooms without either essentializing them, or reducing them to a discursive effect of the interpretative lenses? In this talk I suggest that more attention to the temporal dimension may open up for a better understanding of the dynamic relation between changes in patterns of gendered subjectivities and changes in gendered contexts. Gendered patterns in subjectivities as well as in contexts change over time, but not necessarily in the same pace or in the same direction. Thus, we may have not only "new gender" in new contexts, but also new gender in old contexts, and "old gender" in new contexts. A longitudinal study of one school class - which followed the students through 17 years from 1st grade and to young adulthood - will be used to illustrate these temporal dynamics. A special focus will be put on the contemporary shift in girls' and boys' success in school and analyse this as a combination of new demands in school and of increased ambitions among girls who have grown up with ideals and also to a large extent with institutional practices of gender equality. The social and cognitive advantages the majority of girls have when they start school, compared to the majority of boys, seem in this contexts to accumulate in a way that gives the girls a gradually increasing academic lead throughout compulsory school. However, other aspects of the sociocultural context - especially the focus on bodily perfection and an ever more sexualized culture - also creates new tensions in girls' lives as school winners.

Selected publications:
Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen (2015). The arrow of time in the space of the present: Temporality as methodological and theoretical dimension in child research. Children & Society. DOI:10.1111/chso.12116.

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen. (Ed.) (2014). Forskjeller i klassen. Nye perspektiver på kjønn, klasse og etnisitet i skolen [Differences in the class. New perspectives on gender, class and ethnicity in school]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen & Barrie Thorne (2014). Children, gender, and issues of well-being. In Handbook of child well-being. Theories, methods and policies in global perspective (Vol.1). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science+Business Media.

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen (2013). Gender on class journeys. In C. Maxwell & P. Aggleton (Eds.), Privilege, agency and affect. Understanding the production and effects of action.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Monica Rudberg & Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen (2012). The making of a 'new man': Psychosocial change in a generational context. The Journal of Psycho-Social Studies, 6(1).

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen (2009). Skoletid [School days]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen & Monica Rudberg (2006). Moderne jenter. Tre generasjoner på vei [Modern girls. Three generations on their way]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen (2004). European gender lessons: Girls and boys at scout camps in Denmark, Portugal, Russia and Slovakia. Childhood, 11(2), 207-226.

 

Julie McLeod, Professor of Curriculum, Equity and Social Change

Melbourne Graduate School of Education,  University of Melbourne, Australia
E-mail: j.mcleod@unimelb.edu.au, http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person23602, http://www.socialequity.unimelb.edu.au//

Julie McLeod researches in the history and sociology of education, with a focus on youth, gender relations, curriculum and education reform. This encompasses qualitative and historical studies of subjectivity, gender and schooling, as well as genealogies of educational expertise and systems of reason about youthful identity. Across this work she has explored conceptual and methodological approaches for understanding dynamics of generational and biographical change and the movement of educational ideas. Current projects include oral and life histories of Australian teachers and students across the mid-decades of the twentieth century, a history of progressivism and alternative schooling, and a suite of new and revisited qualitative, longitudinal and cross-generational studies on young people, futures and social values. Julie is currently an editor of the journal Gender and Education. 

In this paper, I revisit an earlier longitudinal study of young people and schooling undertaken in the 1990s in Australia (McLeod and Yates 2006). That study explored students’ perspectives on self, school and futures over an eight-year period, following groups of young people in four contrasting schools. Re-analysis and reflections on this earlier study are juxtaposed with initial insights into changing mediations and meanings of gender in interaction with education emerging from a new qualitative longitudinal study of secondary school students and their parents. The current study, Making Futures, is investigating changing views on educational experiences, social and political values, and future thinking, looking at how young people, living in earlier times and now, think about such matters over time. Themes examined include social differences, gender and sexuality, immigration, place and identity, religion and everyday ethics. Parents are also interviewed separately about these matters and their own educational memories, values and future hopes when they were at school, as well as hopes for their child’s future. Cross-generational narratives, memories and dreams are explored in relation to questions about temporality, historical change and how and when gender is noticed and when it matters. 

Selected relevant publications:
J. McLeod & K. Wright (Eds.) (2015). The promise of the new and genealogies of educational reform. London: Routledge.

K. Wright & J. McLeod (Eds.) (2015) Rethinking youth wellbeing: Critical perspectives.  Singapore: Springer.
http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/wellbeing+%26+quality-of-life/book/978-981-287-187-9

J. McLeod (2012). Vulnerability and the neo-liberal youth citizen: A view from Australia. Comparative Education, 48(1), 11-26. 

J. McLeod (2009). Youth studies, comparative inquiry and the local/global problematic. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 31(4), 1-23.

J. McLeod & K. Wright (2009). The talking cure in everyday life: Gender, generations and friendship. Sociology, 43(1),122-139.http://soc.sagepub.com/content/43/1/122.abstract

J. McLeod & R. Thomson (2009). Researching social change: Qualitative approaches. London: Sage.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/textbooks/Book229849#tabview=title

J. McLeod & L. Yates (2006). Making modern lives: Subjectivity, schooling and social Change. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4267-making-modern-lives.aspx

 

Liv Mette Gulbrandsen, Professor of Social Work

Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy , Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences
E-mail: Liv-Mette.Gulbrandsen@hioa.no, https://www.hioa.no/eng/employee/livgul

Liv Mette Gulbrandsen is a psychologist by training, and she is a professor in social work at Oslo University College. She has studied girls and boys in their everyday life contexts, at home and in schools and neighbourhoods. Her research interests fall within longitudinal studies of children, and the ways in which the children shaping and directing their personal trajectories of growing up through interactions with peers and adults. Gendered meanings and transformation by age are central to what comes into play and what appear as available subject positions for boys and for girls respectively. Adult participants in children's lives are not just parents, but will also include welfare state professionals (teachers, physiotherapists, child welfare officers, psychologists etc.). The meanings of gender are most often working through implicit and conjoint recognition in relationships, and such meanings will also appear as tensions between personal preferences and social norms and standards. Explorations into the ideas and practices of professionals when it comes to involving children 'in all matters affecting the child' are also part of Liv Mette Gulbrandsen's research agenda.

Among the variety of processes put to work by girls and boys in order to make themselves one step older are those connected with bodily comportments, motilities and appearances. In this paper aspects of being, having and changing a growing body are explored. Analyses of qualitative data produced together with schoolchildren in Norway will exemplify gendered and gendering courses of self/body constructions. Among the children involved, there is a considerable variation in bodily abilities and appearances. Both girls and boys with ‘ordinary’ and with ‘extraordinary’ bodies have participated in the research. What a certain body can do and how it is understood, do not just depend on its physical characteristics but also on the material, social and cultural situation in which it is located. The situation ‘hits’ various bodies in various ways and is thereby part of meaning making processes connected to the variation of bodily appearances and (dis)abilities among children and young people. Here I will adopt an intersectional approach including (at least) gender, age and bodily (dis)ability as analytic categories,  even though the social processes of categorizations themselves will be under surveillance. 

Selected relevant publications
Liv Mette Gulbrandsen (Ed.) with Bjørg Fallang, Bennedichte Olsen, Kari Oppsahl, Sissel Seim, Oddbjørg Skjær Ulvik, Ingvil Øien and Sigrid Østensjø (2014). Barns deltakelse i hverdagsliv og profesjonell praksis. En utforskende tilnærming [Children’s participation  in everyday life and professional practices and services. An explorative approach]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Liv Mette Gulbrandsen (2012). Being a child, coming of age: Exploring processes of growing up. In M. Hedegaard, K. Aronsson, C. Højholt and O. Skjær Ulvik (Eds), Children, childhood and everyday life. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Liv Mette Gulbrandsen (2003). Peer relations as arenas for gender constructions among young teenagers. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 11, 113-131.                            

                      

Rachel Thomson, Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies 

Director, Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY), School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
Email: R.Thomson@sussex.ac.uk, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/285568, www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy 

Rachel Thomsonis a sociologist by discipline, and her research interests include the study of the life course and transitions, as well as the interdisciplinary fields of gender and sexuality studies. She is a methodological innovator and is especially interested in capturing lived experience, social processes and the interplay of biographical and historical time. Her current research explores the relationship between face to face and mediated cultures in children and young people’s lives. She is an editor of the journal Children & Society.

In her talk Rachel Thomson will address the different ways in which we notice ‘the work of gender’
in the lives of children and young people. Drawing on micro- ethnographic documents of ‘
a day in a life’ of British teenagers and comparing researcher driven observations and participant
created accounts she will reflect on the conceptual lenses through which gender is both perceived
and constructed. The data explored is drawn from an ESRC funded study called ‘Face to face:
the real and the mediated in children’s cultural worlds’. 

Selected relevant publications
Berriman, L. and Thomson, R. (2015 forthcoming) ‘Spectacles of intimacy? Mapping the moral landscape of teenage social media’. Journal of Youth Studies DOI:10.1080/13676261.2014.992323

Thomson, R., Kehily, M.J, Hadfield, L. & Sharpe, S. (2011) Making modern mothers. Bristol: Policy Press.

McLeod, J. & Thomson, R. (2009) Researching social change: qualitative approaches. London: Sage.

Thomson, R. (2009) Unfolding lives: youth, gender, change. Bristol: Policy Press.

Henderson, S., Holland, J., McGrellis, S., Sharpe, S. & Thomson, R (2007) Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to youth transitions, London: Sage.

 

Dorte Marie Søndergaard, Professor of Social Psychology

Department of Education, Danish School of Education, Denmark
E-mail: dms@edu.au.dk,
http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/dorte-marie-soendergaard(c938db5d-8b6d-4c0c-98e0-c4a0800b3a3e).html

Dorte Marie Søndergaard holds a professorship in social psychology at the Department of Education, Aarhus University. Her research includes poststructuralist and deconstructive analyses of gender among young adults in academia together with analyses of gender and intersectionality in academic leadership and among directors in the financial sector. From 2007-2012 she was director of an interdisciplinary research project on bullying among children in school, which contributed to a turn in the understanding of bullying practices from individualistic to socio-cultural and material-discursive enactment. The conceptualization was taken into a study on bullying in high school. She has done research on children/youth and violent video games, and on intra-acting processes among gaming practices, bullying and relational aggression. A fairly new study engages analyses of technological imitations of the human and of gender formations in the production of avatars and robots – focusing also the formative effects on humans in their interaction with our new ‘fellow species’.

This talk is about the conditioning and potential transformations of gender normativities enacted in, and perhaps even by, the technological imitations of the human. The presentation is based on research material from: 1. A study on violent video gaming and children’s/youth’s interaction with and through virtual avatars, and 2. a rather new study on robots, involving children’s drawings and interviewing on their robot visions. I shall draw on Butler’s conceptualization of gender, Barad’s notion of material-discursive enactments, and Haraway’s points about New Species in order to develop new insights into the processes of gender formation – while taking analytical advantage of the movements of these formations across human and technological enactment.. 

Selected relevant publications:
Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2015). Roboter – unsere neuen ‘Anderen’. Das Argument, 311, 43-50.

Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2015). The dilemmas of victim positioning. Confero, in press.

Robin May Schott & Dorte Marie Søndergaard (Eds.) (2014). School bullying; New theories in context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2013). Virtual materiality, potentiality and subjectivity: How do we conceptualize real-virtual interaction embodied and enacted in computer gaming, imagery and night dreams? Subjectivity, 6(1), 58-76.

Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2013). Den distribuerede vold. Om computerspil, mobning og relationel aggression [The distibution of violence. On computer games, bullying and relational aggression]. In Jette Kofoed & Dorte Marie Søndergaard (Eds.), Mobning gentænkt[Bullying reconsidered]. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2012). Bullying and social exclusion anxiety in schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33(3): 355-372.

Lis Højgaard & Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2011). Theorizing the complexities of discursive and material subjectivity: Agential realism and poststructural analyses. Theory & Psychology, 21(3), 338-354.

Dorte Marie Søndergaard (2002). Poststructuralist approaches to empirical analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(2), 187-204.