Tuija Huuki

University of Oulu · Faculty of Education

This study focuses on how space acts in shaping non-normative pre-teen gendered and sexual cultures. It was conducted in Northern Finland and consists of an arts-based case study of a group of 12- to 13-year-old students, who during our creative workshops on gender, sexuality and power reflected on the possibilities of gender and sexual diversity i...

With this paper, we participate in the body of work seeking to develop ethically sustainable practices for addressing gender, sexuality and power in pre-teen peer cultures in an inclusive, non-normative and transformative manner. To do so, we draw on feminist new materialist and posthuman scholarship and a series of events from our school-based cre...

This article explores the vital roles of matter in the emerging sexual cultures of elementary school children. Based on a case study of a seven-year-old girl, it draws from ethnographic research on the gendered and sexual power relations of students in Northern Finland. Inspired by feminist, new materialist theories, the analysis indicates how ever...

Edited journal issue on the gendered politics of hair

In this article, we examine the immensely popular animated Disney film Frozen 2 (2019) through its potential as decolonial queer pedagogy. Drawing on Indigenous educational studies, queer and feminist Indigenous theories, and research on affect and trauma, we ask how the film popularizes Sámi nature-based cosmologies, addresses and attempts to repa...

New materialisms have informed an array of creative methodologies, inviting scholars to rethink ethics in the practices of research with children. Participating in this rethinking, this study elaborates on ethical practices in creative research where new materialist and arts-based methodologies intra-act with children and the sensitivities of gende...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme orastavia romanttisia suhdekulttuureja lapsuuden ja nuoruuden rajapinnoilla keskittyen erityisesti niihin etäisyyden ottamiseen tyttöjen näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksen aineisto on tuotettu 2010-luvun jälkipuoliskolla erään pohjoissuomalaisen kaupungin alakoulun viidesluokkalaisten tyttöjen kanssa. Hyödyntämällä feministi...

This article focuses on a study in which feminist new materialist and arts-based methodologies were employed to explore how three girls address their experiences of sexual harassment as part of ‘crushes’ with boys in fourth and fifth grade. The study stems from longitudinal research on how Finnish children from pre-school to pre-teen years are caug...

This article examines the possibilities for re-imagining a queer indigenous past in Sparrooabbán (Me and My Little Sister, Suvi West, 2016)-the first feature-length documentary film that discusses non-heterosexuality in Sámi communities. We explore how the film queers the gákti, the traditional Sámi dress; how it uses elements other than verbal exp...

Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastelemme oppilaan osallisuutta alakoulun kehityskeskustelussa affektiivisten ja materiaalisten ulottuvuuksien näkökulmasta. Feministisessä, uusmaterialistisessa ja posthumanistisessa tutkimuksessa on viime aikoina haastettu kielellisiä ja tekstuaalisia tutkimusmenetelmiä kehittämällä uusia metodologisia välineitä muun muass...

This study examines existing research on the use of arts-based methods in approaching issues sensitive for youth and children. We conducted a qualitative, systematic review of twenty academic publications on this topic from 1997 to 2017. Our results show the use of arts-based methods to (1) recognize and make visible previously invisible experience...

This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA (www.agendaonline.co.uk) is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the concept of the ‘cwrdd’ – a Welsh word for gatherings made, found and stumbled upon – we explore how our AGENDA cwrdds attune...

This paper examines what research with children can do and become when it intra-acts with a MeToo hashtag, creative methods, experiences of sexual harassment and the making and travelling of Valentine’s Day cards. The paper is grounded within a creative research-activist project, #MeToo Postscriptum, which aimed to address sexual harassment in pre-...

This article draws on a co-productive, arts-based study, in Northern Finland, of 40 children from 10 to 11 years of age. Applying Gilles Deleuze’s idea of the virtual, the author maps the journey of the children’s creative activities, as developed through a series of workshops over one academic year. This article demonstrates how repetitive craftin...

In this paper, we respond to feminist new materialist scholars’ calls to explore what research in the field of gendered and sexual violence can be, do, and become. This paper explores the microprocesses of change within the more-than-human child–card entanglements as part of our research–activist campaign addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen pe...

Hundreds of millions of youths suffer from various violence each year. The negative impacts motivate much research and numerous studies on violence. However, those attempts went their own way, making the achieved results, especially from engineering, not so useful. Based on the Sensor and Social Web (SEWEB) concept, Violence Detection (VITEC) was p...

The concluding chapter of the book is written by Tuija Huuki and Maija Lanas. It addresses Arctic child-adult/past-present entanglements in a painful past-present lecture at university. Tuija and Maija create a chapter where they approach childhood with post-individual and non-anthropocentric theories of subjectivity. They point out how experiences...

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

In this paper, we explore non-violence and the responsibility for non-violence inspired by Karen Barad’s work on the material–discursive notion of response-ability. Our analysis, by way of thinking with theory, is based on a careful engagement with the life of one woman, Lena, as told by her in writing and interviews between the years 2007 and 2015...

This paper draws on feminist new materialist, poststructuralist and post-human theories to rethink discomforting moments when engaging with sensitive topics in teacher education. It is argued that the common approach to such events – as instances of student resistance or pedagogical failures – is both simplistic and problematic, and that a more hol...

This paper draws on new feminist materialist and posthuman theories to explore discrimination experienced by Sámi attendees at Finnish boarding schools. The aim is to shift attention away from the human actor to a wider field of power relations, and consider discrimination as force relations, emerging dynamically through assemblages of, for example...

Drawing on ethnographic multi-modal data of the gendered and sexual dynamics of pre-school play (age 6) in a rapidly declining fishing and farming community in North Finland, this paper offers a glimpse into our sense-making of a short video-recorded episode in which three boys repeatedly pile up on and demand a kiss from one of their girl classmat...

This paper draws on the story of ‘Mikael’, a schoolboy from northern Finland, to examine how his affective ties of compassion and his pursuit of dominant forms of masculinity evolve in his journey from middle childhood to young adulthood. In his earlier years, Mikael's speech regarding his relationships with peers and family members indicates a non...

This article draws on school-based ethnographic research in two elementary schools (in South Wales, UK and north Finland) to explore the ‘ordinary affects’ (Stewart, 2007) of gendered/sexual power in young children's (aged 5–6) negotiation of their own and others’ bodies in playground and classroom spaces. We apply queer and feminist appropriations...

What is respect among school boys and how can it be earned? Reaching across disciplines, this article contends that respect is a dimension of status in the context of masculinities in peer relations, as are peer likeability and power positions. Drawing on longitudinal interviews and observational material, the authors scrutinize violence, physicali...

Through a feminist approach this paper illustrates how humour is used as a resource and strategy for status among Finnish school boys and in constructing culturally accepted masculinity in the field of informal school. Based on interview and observation material collected in three schools, the results suggest that although humour is often affiliati...