Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research

This handbook provides a compilation of research in ChildhoodNature and brings together existing research themes and seminal authors in the field alongside new cutting edge research authored by world class researchers drawing on cross cultural and international research data.

The underlying objectives of the handbook are two-fold:

- Opening up spaces for ChildhoodNature researchers;

- Consolidating ChildhoodNature research into one collection that informs Education.

The use of the new concept 'ChildhoodNature' reflects the editors' and authors' underpinning belief, and the latest innovative concepts in the field, that as children are nature this should be redefined in this integrating concept. The handbook will, therefore, critique and reject an anthropocentric view of nature. As such it will disrupt existing ways of considering children and nature and reject the view that humans are superior to nature.

The work will include a ChildhoodNature Companion authored by children and young people which will effectively enable children and young people to not only undertake their own research, but also author and represent it alongside the International Research Handbook on ChildhoodNature.

Dr Amy Cutter-Mackenzie is a Professor at Southern Cross University, School of Education, in Sustainability, Environment and Education. She is the Deputy Head of School Research & HDR Training for the School of Education, as well as the Research Leader of the 'Sustainability, Environment and Education' (SEE) Research Cluster. In 2014 Amy was awarded the Australian Association for Environmental Education Fellowship (Life Achievement Award) for her outstanding contribution to environmental education research. Amy's research is primarily situated in the area of children's ontologies and agencies in environmental education and its research. She has published substantially in the form of books, book chapters, journal articles, conference publications and creative works. Amy's latest two books are: 'Young Children's Play and Early Childhood Environmental Education' (Springer, co-authored with Edwards, Moore & Boyd) and 'The Socioecological Educator' (Springer, Co-edited with Wattchow, Jeans, Alfrey, Brown & O'Connor). Amy is also the Editor of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education (Cambridge University Press) and Consulting Editor for the Journal of Environmental Education, the International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education (NAAEE) and International Journal of Environmental and Science Education. She is also the Chief Investigator of national (including ARCs) and international projects in the areas of early childhood environmental education, climate change education and ChildhoodNature.
Dr Karen Malone is Professor of Sustainability, Deputy Director for Centre for Educational Research and Leader of the sustainability research group in the at Western Sydney University. She is a global expert on sustainability and theorising the posthuman in the Anthropocene; child/nature and multi-species relations; sustainable cities; social sustainability; child (family) friendly cities and communities; globalisation, international and urban studies; human and non human rights; and the sociology of contemporary childhoods. She has predominantly utilised critical and poststructuralist theory but in more recent times has been engaging with conceptual work in posthumanism and vital (new) materialism. She is on the editorial Board for a number of journals including: Children, Youth and Environments, Australian Journal for Environmental Education, Children and Society and is a member of the CommonWorlds Collective. She is founder and chair, UNICEF Child-Friendly Cities Asia Pacific Network and an advisory member of UNICEF's Research Committee. In the past ten years Professor Malone has attracted over 2 million dollars in research grants, awards and consultancies and has published 5 books, 28 book chapters and 50 refereed journal publications. She is currently writing a sole-authored Palgrave book for the childhood and development series titled: Children in the Anthropocene and just published an edited collection for Springer with Son Truong and Tonia Gray Reimaginging Sustainability in Precarious Times. She has worked for UNESCO international projects supporting policy and research for the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development, and has conducted research for UNICEF Child Friendly Cities program in five majority world nations. In 2013 Dapto Dreaming, a project where school children designed with Stockland urban developers a new greenfield community she won the Australian Planning Institute of Australia NSW Presidential award for best urban planning project of the year.
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking is Director of Studies for the MA Education and MA International Education and Globalisation in the Department of Education, University of Bath, UK. Elisabeth has published widely in the field of environmental education. Her research interests relate to childhood and environment, the relationship between children and their local environment and children's participation.