Mel McCree

Personal statement

Mel is a Senior Lecturer within Early Childhood Studies. She leads modules in Children’s Voices (rights and justice), Play and Playfulness and Research in Early Childhood. Mel joined Bath Spa in 2018, previously working as a senior researcher and lecturer at UWE and Plymouth University. She has experience as a mentor, trainer, creative outdoor practitioner, environmental educator and arts therapist in early childhood settings, as well as within educational, cultural and health contexts both nationally and internationally.

Mel’s research focuses on environment-society relationships. Her chief two interests are play and politics, or in her words, eco-social justice. Play encompasses creativity, improvisation, relationships (both eco and social) and the expression of wellbeing and growth so essential to survival. Mel’s focus on everyday eco-social justice focuses on how children and families participate as citizens in making our worlds and identities, alongside collective, community-based responses to climate change and business as usual. Her interdisciplinary research communicates between more-than-human geographies, environmental humanities, nature connections and feminist new materialisms with childhood studies.

Mel is an internationally-renowned scholar of forest school. Her work investigates how we overcome cultural, social and political barriers, and how forest school practitioners and participants respond to our current eco-social crises. She completed her PhD (an ethnography of the experiences of Forest School practitioners) at the University of Gloucestershire in 2014. Her subsequent research on forest school includes collaborative partnerships and systemic change, the impact on wellbeing and attainment, and inclusive practice for disadvantaged children.

Currently, Mel is investigating the cultural politics of land access, children’s voices for climate justice and multi-species relations through nature-based play. Mel is the author of a feralosophy that supports creative participatory approaches and provocative thinking; an untamed conceptual framework that addresses the mess of environment-society relations. In her consultancy, she supports the establishment of outdoor settings and practitioner development.

Academic qualifications

• PhD Education - University of Gloucestershire (2009-14) 
• MA Creative Writing (Environment, Nature Writing and Script) - Bath Spa University (2006-07)
• Postgraduate Music Therapy Diploma - University of Bristol (2002-03)
• Community Music Diploma - Goldsmiths College (2001-02)

Professional memberships

She is a member of the Common World Childhoods and Pedagogies International Research Collective. Members of this international network research children's relations with the more-than-human world (e.g species, place and materials). 

Other memberships:

• Natural England Strategic Research Network (outdoors for all and learning in natural environments)
• Royal Geographical Society SIG on Children, Youth and Families
• Fellow - RSA
• Fellow - RGS
• UK Forest School Association Research SIG
• Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER) UNESCO Network in Europe (EERA)
• EU Child Friendly Cities Network
• European Outdoor Education network
• Steering group - Research Centre for the Environmental Humanities

Areas of expertise

Children's voices, rights and justice; environment-society relations; play and creativity; research methods; environmental education, health and wellbeing; outdoor play, learning and forest school.