Dr. Fikile Nxumalo
I am an assistant professor in Early Childhood Education in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, where I am also affiliated faculty with African and African Diaspora Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. My work is centered on environmental and place-attuned early childhood studies that are situated within and responsive to young children’s uneven anthropogenic and settler colonial inheritances. This scholarship, which is published in journals including Environmental Education Research, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Children's Geographies, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Global Studies of Childhood, and Environmental Humanities, is rooted in perspectives from Indigenous knowledges, Black feminist geographies, more-than-human geographies, as well as environmental humanities and sciences. My research and pedagogical interests in the entanglements of place, land, environment, childhood, race, and settler colonialism are informed by my experiences growing up in Swaziland, Southern Africa, and my experiences as a mother, early childhood educator and pedagogista working and living on unceded Coast Salish territories in what is now British Columbia.
I am an assistant professor in Early Childhood Education in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin, where I am also affiliated faculty with African and African Diaspora Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. My work is centered on environmental and place-attuned early childhood studies that are situated within and responsive to young children’s uneven anthropogenic and settler colonial inheritances. This scholarship, which is published in journals including Environmental Education Research, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Children's Geographies, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Global Studies of Childhood, and Environmental Humanities, is rooted in perspectives from Indigenous knowledges, Black feminist geographies, more-than-human geographies, as well as environmental humanities and sciences. My research and pedagogical interests in the entanglements of place, land, environment, childhood, race, and settler colonialism are informed by my experiences growing up in Swaziland, Southern Africa, and my experiences as a mother, early childhood educator and pedagogista working and living on unceded Coast Salish territories in what is now British Columbia.
