Shaddai Tembo

Personal statement

Shaddai Tembo is a lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, supporting delivery to students at Bath Spa University and for the Pre-School Education (China) programme, taught at Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology (HUHST), Hunan Province, China.

His research interests centre around issues of subjectivity and identity, equalities and social justice through sociomaterial and more-than-human theoretical frameworks in early childhood. He has published papers in the Journal of Early Childhood Research, Ethnicities, and Emotion, Space and Society. They also contribute to the academic peer-review process.

His doctoral thesis was titled ‘Affective Sociomaterialisation: An Inquiry into Early Childhood Subjectivities within Outdoor Early Childhood Provision in Scotland, UK.'. It applied a sociomaterial metaphysical framework to propose an alternative way of understanding how subjectivities come to form in early childhood environments, bringing together insights from process philosophy and postqualitative ethnographies to evaluate how a sociomaterial framework toward understanding children's identity in-formation can assist learning and teaching. Shaddai received an MSc with Merit in Social Science Research Methods (Sociology) from the University of Bristol. His undergraduate degree is a First Class BA (Hons) Education: Early Years from Bath Spa University.

Shaddai is a trustee for Early Education, a national charity supporting early years practitioners with training, resources and professional networks, and campaigning for quality education for the youngest children. Shaddai is also a trustee for the Fatherhood Institute, the UK's leading independent think tank on fatherhood, and part of the steering group for the MITEY campaign which aims to celebrate, support and increase the numbers of, men working in early childhood education in the UK.

Shaddai's professional background is as a former early years practitioner. He has worked in a range of PVI settings, and he was part of the family support team within a children's centre in central Bristol.

Academic qualifications

• PhD: Education, University of the West of Scotland
• MSc Social Science Research Methods (Sociology), University of Bristol
• BA (Hons): Education: Early Years, Bath Spa University.

Professional memberships

• Early Education
• British Educational Research Association
• British Sociological Association.

Areas of expertise

• Areas of expertise
• Subjectivity and identity
• Race and racism in early childhood
• Gender and heteronormativity in early childhood
• Sociomaterial and more-than-human theories.