Join us for the next in our popular series of Magic Webinars.
We are excited to welcome Professor Abi Hackett who will be joining us to think about language as more-than-words.
How is language material? And what is the role of the body and place in the emergence of young children’s communication?
In this presentation Professor of Childhood and Education, Abi Hackett, will draw on long-term ethnographic research with young children and their families in communities to think about language as more-than words, more-than representation and more-than-human.
Through a series of stories from the field, we will explore the role of place, materiality and the body in the literacies of young children aged 12-36 months. The aim is to build a picture of how children participate in, or become caught up in, literacies and language in the contexts of their everyday lives.
Through the presentation Abi will argue for the need to make space to embrace divergent, complicated, irrational, playful and non-functional language practices in early childhood, rather than looking for rapid, straight-line development.
This session is being recorded it will be accessible to all ticket holders for 30 days after the event.
About Abi
Abi Hackett is a Professor of Childhood and Education at the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University.
She is interested in the role of place, materiality and bodies in young children’s lives. She researches mostly in community spaces, in collaboration with children and families, employing ethnographic and post-qualitative methods.
Abi has researched early years pedagogy in Norway, children’s experiences of trees in South Yorkshire, and young children’s literacy practices as part of an international project bridging UK, Finland and Australia.
She is the lead editor of Working with Young Children in Museums. Weaving Theory and Practice, published with Routledge, and author of More- than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Language, Place, and the Body in Childhood Literacies (Routledge, 2025).
