Abigail Hackett

Professor Abigail Hackett is a leading academic in Childhood and Education at Sheffield Hallam University's Sheffield Institute of Education, part of the College of Social Sciences and Arts. Her research focuses on young children's literacies, materiality, and embodied experiences in non-formal learning spaces like museums. She experiments with innovative methodologies to study under-three-year-olds' communication practices in more-than-human environments. Current projects include NERC-funded 'Voices of the future' exploring treescapes with children, and Norway's KINDKNOW Centre for Sustainable Development research.

Key research areas involve redefining early childhood education in response to environmental precarity and colonial histories. She has collaborated with Humber Museums Partnership to study museum spaces for young children. Supervised doctoral topics include early childhood literacies and community-based methodologies. Her work emphasizes ethical, posthumanist frameworks for understanding children's agency through movement, sound, and spatial engagement.

• Research grants: NERC (2021-2024), British Academy (2017-2021), Norwegian Research Council (2018-2023)
• Methodological innovations: GoPro ethnography, multisensory data collection
• Publications: Over 20 peer-reviewed articles and books on early childhood pedagogy and museum studies

Her teaching integrates interdisciplinary approaches, bridging theory with practice in early years education. Ongoing projects aim to cocreate sustainable futures through child-centered environmental literacy practices.