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Animals & Society Research Initiative (ASRI)

Professor Narda Nelson

Narda Nelson

Incoming Assistant Professor

School of Child & Youth Care (SCYC)

Contact:
ORCID:
0000-0002-6394-3474
Credentials:
BA Hons. (Gender Studies, UVic), MA (SCYC, UVic), PhD (in progress) Faculty of Education, Curriculum Studies (Western University)
Area(s) of expertise:
early childhood pedagogy/praxis, children’s more-than-human relations, decolonial feminist ethics of care, common worlding research methods, environmental education

Narda Nelson is a pedagogist and lead researcher with the University of Victoria Child Care. Drawing on her background in gender studies and upbringing in Treaty 8 country in northern Alberta, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to Early Childhood Studies with a particular focus on reimagining ethical futures with plant, animal, & waste flow relations in early childhood. Narda is a member of the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory & Common Worlds Research Collective and is excited to join the UVic School of Child & Youth Care (SCYC), Faculty of Education, as an Assistant Professor in July 2026.

About Narda Nelson

Research Interests:

Early Childhood Education; children’s more-than-human relations; decolonial, antiracist early years praxis; feminist ethics of care; common worlding pedagogies & methods; Environmental Education/STEM Studies; Environmental Humanities; arts-based & postfoundational approaches to research.

ASRI-relevant peer-reviewed publications:

  • Nelson, N., & Nxumalo, F. (in progress). In N. Kemp (Eds.) Outdoor Spaces in Earliest Childhood. Routledge.
  • Nelson, N., & Drew, J. (2023). Multispecies collaboratories: Reconfiguring children’s more-than- human entanglement with colonization, urban development, and climate change. Children’s Geographies, 1-17. DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2023.2253184
  • Nelson, N. (2019). Tracking: Cultivating the ‘arts of awareness’ in early childhood. In B.D. Hodgins (Ed.) Feminist Research for 21st-Century Childhoods: Common Worlds Methods (pp. 101-110). Bloomsbury.
  • Nelson, N. (2018). Rats, death, and Anthropocene relations in urban Canadian childhoods. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie, K. Malone, & E. Barratt Hacking, (Eds.) International Research Handbook on Childhood Nature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature (pp. 1-23). Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_45-1
  • Nelson, N., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2018). Rethinking nature-based approaches in early childhood education: Common worlding practices. Journal of Childhood Studies, 43(1), 4-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v43i1.18261
  • Haro Woods, Nelson, N., Yazbeck, SL, Danis, I., Elliott, D., Wilson, J., Payjack, J., Pickup, A. (2018). With(in) the forest: (re)conceptualizing pedagogies of care. Journal of Childhood Studies, 43(1), 44-59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v43i1.18264
  • Nelson, N., Coon, E., Chadwick, A. (2015). Engaging with the messiness of place in early childhood education and art therapy: Exploring animal relations, traditional hide, and Drum. Journal of Childhood Studies, 40(2), 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v40i2.15178