Brooke Richardson (she/her) is a care activist, scholar and mother motivated by the belief that good care is foundational to meaningful lives and a democratic society. Brooke completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), first in Early Childhood Studies and then shifting to Policy Studies (focus on childcare policy). She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Sociology, Child and Youth Studies, Politics and Early Childhood Studies at TMU, Brock and Carleton University over the past decade.
She is excited to be starting a position as Assistant Professor position in Child and Youth Studies at the Mount. Her research and scholarly work focus on the corporatization of childcare in Canada, the political positioning of childcare in contemporary welfare states, reconceptualizing and reasserting care in early childhood education, feminist possibilities for early childhood educators and reimagining child welfare systems through a feminist ethics of care lens. She has published and presented nationally and internationally on topics related to caring for children and has recently published two edited volumes: Feminisms and the Early Childhood Educator: Critical Conversations (Bloomsbury) and Mothering on the Edge: A Critical Examination of Mothering within Child Protection Systems (Demeter Press).
Finally, Brooke makes a concerted effort to remain active in the communities with whom she studies and works. Brooke was the President of the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario from 2018-2022 and is now taking a leadership role in the Child Welfare Truth Telling Collective. Along with others, she is working to establish a Circle of Strength – a brave space for those doing motherwork who have intersected with child protection systems.
Selected publications
Books
Richardson, B. (2022). Mothering on the edge: A critical examination of mothering within child protection. Demeter Press.
Richardson, B. & Langford, R. (2022). The early childhood educator: Critical conversations in feminist theory. Feminist Thought in Childhood Research, Volume 5. Bloomsbury.
Peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters
Richardson, B., Cook, K., Breitkreuz, R., & Wu, B. (2023). Writing gender in: Pandemic childcare policy responses in Australia and Canada. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1554477X.2023.2201916
Richardson, B., Powell, A., Johnston, L. & Langford, R. (2023). Reconceptualizing activism through a feminist care ethics in the Ontario, Canada early childhood education context: Enacting caring activism. Social Sciences, 12(2). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/89
Lehrer, J. & Richardson, B. (2023). Resisting children as human capital. In M. Vandenbroeck, J. Lehrer and L. Mitchell (Eds). The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education: Resisting Neoliberalism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003218104
Richardson, B., & Langford, R. (2022). Care-full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14639491221120037?journalCode=ciea
Richardson, B., Prentice, S., & Lero, D. (2021). “I’m kind of in a dilemma”: The Challenges of Non-standard Work Schedules and Childcare. Community, Work and Families. http://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2021.2007048
Richardson, B., Powell, A., & Langford, R. (2021). Critiquing Ontario’s childcare policy responses to the inextricably connected needs of mothers, children and early childhood educators. Journal of Childhood Studies, 46(3) 1-15. https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs463202119951
Richardson, B. (2021). Commodification and care: An exploration of workforces’ experiences of care in private and public childcare systems from a feminist political theory of care perspective. Critical Social Policy, April 2021. http://doi.org/10.1177/0261018321998934
Richardson, B. & Langford, R. (2019). Citizen engagement in childcare policy: Examining childcare policy problematizations in Canadian newspaper articles from 2008 to 2015. In S. Phillipson and S. Garvis (Eds), Volume III Early Childhood Education in the 21st Century: Teachers and families (pp. 23-37). London, UK: Routledge.