Portrait of Dr. Fikile Nxumalo

Centering Black Relational Knowledges in Early Childhood Research and Practice

Date & Time: April 19, 2024, 3:30 pm–5:15 pm

Location: Zoom Meeting


The CSHE and the BSIEL presents Black Research Approaches: Centering Black Relational Knowledges in Early Childhood Research and Practice, part of the 2023-2024 Black Study in Education Lab Webinar Series.

The focus of this talk is potentials of Black relational knowledges in early childhood research and practice. This work begins with the premise that early childhood research and practice are key sites at which to create and imagine more livable and liberatory worlds. I share examples of conceptual and pedagogical orientations that I see as holding potential to make visible and affirmatively respond to the relational knowledges and modes of thriving that young Black children and their families enact in the places and spaces of education. Importantly, this work situates the education of young Black children within current conditions of anti-Blackness yet insists that Black childhoods are not defined by their marginalization