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
Pedagogical Coordinator
Randa Khattar is a Pedagogical Coordinator 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.

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.

Niousha Pavia
eLearning and Knowledge mobilization Coordinator
Niousha Pavia is the eLearning and Knowledge mobilization Coordinator for the ECPN and an instructor at Western University’s Faculty of Education. She has extensive experience as a classroom teacher, teaching students online and in person from countries such as China, Japan, Germany, the USA, South Korea, Canada, and Thailand. She was previously a TESOL Program Coordinator and Instructor at Explore and Teach Asia in Thailand. She served as the editorial assistant for the TESL Canada Journal from 2020 to 2022. Niousha’s contributions to the academic community include publications in journals such as ELT and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Her research focuses on second language learning, research methodology and teacher education.