Dr Karen Barr PhD, FHEA, PGCert, EYPS, BA (Hons)
Senior Lecturer
Summary
I have taught across a range of courses relating to early childhood and education at Sheffield Hallam since 2008. Prior to this I worked with children in schools, nurseries and out-of-school provision around Yorkshire. I am especially interested in creative pedagogical research methodologies that attend to how learning takes shape in emergent, situated, nonlinear ways.
About
I have taught at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ on various courses relating to education and childhood. Prior to teaching in Higher Education, I worked in a range of early childhood contexts, including schools, nurseries and out of school play provision around Yorkshire. I have a special interest in situated learning encounters, and much of my research focuses on how insights emerge through relationally entangled human-nonhuman worlds.
My research takes up posthuman theory and my modes of inquiry contest assumptions of human exceptionalism and separateness from the world. I experiment with creative research practices that attune to affective flows, rhythms, and momentary intensities in learning events, and explore how learning can be valued in non-traditional ways as a means of challenging performativity-driven measurement technologies.
Teaching
Sheffield Institute of Education
College of Social Sciences and Arts
Subject area
Education and Childhood
Courses taught
Early Childhood Studies
Children and Childhoods
Education
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Some of my current writing projects focus on insights emerging through my recent doctoral study. For my PhD, I conceptualised placements on Early Childhood Studies degrees as dynamic, contingent, and emergent assemblages of more-than-human forces and precarious multispecies relational entanglements. I explored how affective forces in placement contexts influence learning experiences, and how learning emerges through relationships between matter and meaning, which are mutually implicated.
I am also engaged in research and writing projects with colleagues from other universities, which experiment with arts-based and feminist materialist modes of knowledge-making.
Recent publications and projects can be found at my Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Gate and Orcid pages at the websites below.
Publications
Journal articles
Taylor, C.A., Hogarth, H., Cranham, J., Hewlett, S.-.J., Bastos, E., Barratt Hacking, E., & Barr, K. (2023). . Journal of Posthumanism, 3 (1), 13-31.
Hogarth, H., Taylor, C.A., Hewlett, S., Cranham, J., Barr, K., Bastos, E., & Barratt Hacking, E. (2022). . Qualitative Inquiry.
Bath, C., Barr, K., & Haynes, M. (2014). . Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 66 (2), 249-262.
Barr, K.E. (n.d.). Posthumanism and Higher Education - Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Edited by CA Taylor and A Bayley. Journal of Posthumanism, 1 (1).
Book chapters
Barr, K., & Taylor, C. (2025). . In Koro, M., & Murris, K. (Eds.) The Handbook of Reconfiguring Interpretation in (Post) Qualitative Ï㽶ÊÓƵ. Routledge:
Cranham, J., Hewlett, S., Taylor, C.A., Hogarth, H., Barratt Hacking, E., Bastos, E., & Barr, K.E. (2024). Not Mine, Not Yours, But Ours Collaborative writing simultaneously together-apart. In Ulmer, J.B., Hughes, C., Salazar Pérez, M., & Taylor, C.A. (Eds.) The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Ï㽶ÊÓƵ and Methodological Praxis. Routledge
Cranham, J., Hewlett, S., Taylor, C.A., Hogarth, H., Barratt Hacking, E., Bastos, E., & Barr, K.E. (2024). Not Mine, Not Yours, But Ours Collaborative writing simultaneously together-apart. In Ulmer, J.B., Hughes, C., Salazar Pérez, M., & Taylor, C.A. (Eds.) The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Ï㽶ÊÓƵ and Methodological Praxis. Routledge
Barr, K., & Seat, H. (2023). Possibilities for Knowing Differently with a More-than-human Ladybird-pedagogue. In Varga, B., Monreal, T., & Christ, R.C. (Eds.) Toward a Stranger and More Posthuman Social Studies. Teachers College Press
Barr, K. (2019). Becoming a professional: entanglements with identity and practice. In Fitzgerald, D., & Maconochie, H. (Eds.) Early Childhood Studies: a student's guide. Sage
Barr, K., & Borkett, P. (2015). Play with children from diverse cultures. In Moyles, J. (Ed.) The Excellence of Play. (4th). Routledge
Barr, K., & Truelove, L. (2015). Play and the Achievement of Potential. In Moyles, J. (Ed.) The Excellence of Play. Routledge
Books
Ulmer, J.B., Hughes, C.A., Pérez, M.S., & Taylor, C.A. (n.d.). The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Ï㽶ÊÓƵ and Methodological Praxis. Routledge.
Presentations
Barr, K.E. (2024). A commotion of clattering coffee cups: becoming-with affective more-than-human assemblages. Presented at: BERA ECR conference, Leeds
Posters
Barr, K.E. (2025). . Presented at: The 5th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Edinburgh, 2025