The ECPN Team

Kathleen Kummen
Co-Director
Kathleen is a co-director of the ECPN and the chair of the School of Education and Childhood Studies at Capilano University, located on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, shíshálh, Lil’Wat, and Musqueam Nations. As a researcher, educator and instructor, Kathleen endeavours to reimagine and revitalize early childhood leadership as an ongoing practice of disruption to make space for alternative narratives of early childhood education.

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
Co-Director
Veronica is a professor of early childhood education in the Faculty of Education at Western University in Ontario, Canada, and co-director of the ECPN. Prior to joining Western University, she was a professor in the School of Child & Youth Care at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where she now serves as an adjunct professor. Her writing and research contribute to the Common Worlds Research Collective (tracing children’s relations with places, materials and other species) and the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory (experimenting with the contours, conditions and complexities of 21st-century pedagogies).

Denise Hodgins
Deputy Director
Denise is the deputy director of the ECPN and lead researcher and pedagogist with UVic Child Care Services. Her work is rooted in feminist material theoretical perspectives, which she explores in her books Gender and Care with Young Children: A Feminist Material Approach to Early Childhood Education (2019) and Feminist Research for 21st-Century Childhoods: Common Worlds Methods (2019), various journal articles and chapters in edited books. Denise lives and works on Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ traditional territories and is a member of the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory and Common Worlds Research Collective.

Randa Khattar
Administrative Director
Randa Khattar is Knowledge Mobilization Director for the ECPN and an adjunct professor and instructor in Western University’s Faculty of Education. Previously she held the position of executive director of the Secretariat for the Ontario Centres of Excellence for Early Years and Child Care. She served as coeditor of the Journal of Childhood Studies from 2018 to 2020. She was elected into the role of president of the Canadian Association for Young Children (CAYC) in 2020. Randa’s research collaborations include the Climate Action Network, Early Childhood Collaboratories, Pedagogist Network of Ontario and the Common Worlds Research Collective. She lives and works on the territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinabek, the Chippewas, and the Wendat.

Narda Nelson
Pedagogical Communications Coordinator
Narda is a pedagogist and researcher with the University of Victoria Child Care Services and works with the ECPN as pedagogical communications coordinator and a faculty stream pedagogist. Drawing on her background in gender studies, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to research and practice with a particular interest in reimagining ethical futures with plant, animal, and waste flow relations in early childhood. Born and raised in Treaty 8 country, Narda lives and works on Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ territories. She is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective and Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory.

Meagan Montpetit
Pedagogical Coordinator
Meagan is the Pedagogical Coordinator at the ECPN. She is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective and the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory. Meagan’s doctoral research reimagines children’s’ and educators’ relations with more-than-human others with theories of feminist spiritualities. Meagan has taught at post-secondary institutions in British Columbia and Ontario. She is grateful to live on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Sarah Hennessy
Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator
Sarah is a multimodal researcher, educator and artist at The University of Western Ontario. With particular attention to early childhood education, she is curious about art (as artist, witness, and educator) and how to engage in the complexification of living and learning with others, more-than-humans and humans alike. Her research merges art and education in the creation of an Uncommon Field Guide to think with place, young children and climate times. She grateful to live, work and research on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton Peoples. Hennessy is a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective.