Pedagogy 2025
Abstract
As researchers we have sited our collage methods around spaces of leisure – first at our kitchen tables with bread and soup; then at the climbing wall with women climbers; and in cultural studies of play with students in teaching. As our interdisciplinary collaboration emerged, we took up Dadaist artist Hannah Höch’s (1919) invitation to “cut with the kitchen knife” first as a way of structuring our own collective, and contextualising our methods, but in doing so also centring the (gendered) labour and maintenance that leisure so often entails. Make the stew; pack the kit; edit the article; bring them to the rockface; take the photo; mind the children – we find ourselves noticing how we entwine our lives with the work we do in leisure as in academia. Höch’s own early groundbreaking photomontages came at a moment of technological and social upheaval, but also built on long lineages of leisure spaces and ‘women’s work’ with collage. How can the collective responsibility of making space for leisure help us to shift from individualised models of ‘sufficient wellbeing’ towards practices of collective contested justice through participatory research, teaching, analysis and scholarly community? Here we analyse our documentation of collaging collectively for traces of the entangled labour of maintenance and possibilities for collective justice, to “craft new spaces and gatherings” (Reardon et al., 2015, pps. 7-8) for imagining academia otherwise.
Ben Dalton is a Principal Lecturer in the Leeds School of Arts. Ben’s communication design research sits at the intersection of identity design and critical infrastructure studies, investigating how identity is expressed, and the networks and technologies that underpin it. Ben’s research practice centres inter-disciplinary/organisational collaboration, and includes developing prototype technologies that explore contemporary experiences of identity, as well as participatory methodologies of experimental design and art practice. Ben’s teaching includes video games and interactive documentary.
Beccy Watson is a Reader in the Carnegie School of Sport. Beccy’s research focuses on interrelationships between gender, ‘race’ and class and informs work on leisure, identities and intersectional approaches in the critical, social analysis of leisure and sport. She is a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Research Centre and the Institute of Sport, Physical Activity and Leisure.
Carol Osborne is an independent researcher and also works in PGR development and support at the University of Huddersfield. Her doctoral research focused on gender relations in the history of British climbing, c.1857-1955; she retains an interest in historical and contemporary representations of women in sport.
Emily Ankers is a Doctoral Researcher at Brunel University, London, funded by the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership. Their research focuses on women and gender diverse people’s experiences of rock climbing and wellbeing; they are founding editor of Beta Magazine, now operating as Beta Club to facilitate inclusive community-based events in and about the outdoors.
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Thursday 20th November, 2025