Dr Kerry Harman

Research

Research interests

learning in and through everyday/night work practices
democratic academic research practices
sensory ways of knowing

Research overview

My main research interests are concerned with the politics of learning at work. My work explores the interrelationships between workplace practices, knowledges, power and subjectivity. I use the notions of embodiment, performativity and dissensus to help me in these explorations. I am interested in developing ways of representing learning at work that enable different dimensions of workplace experience to become visible. I am also critical of the discourse of Mastery which prevails in much of the workplace learning literature.

My research strands include:

-An exploration of the material effects of workplace practices in specific sites. What objects and subjects are produced in and through everyday practices at work?

-An interest in representations of workplace learning and approaches that enable everyday learning to be re-presented as other than mastery. What is able to count as learning at work and who are able to be counted as workplace learners? Can resistance to organisational/workplace norms be understood as learning at work?

-Sensory ways of knowing

-Taking care when researching sensory ways of knowing

Research Centres and Institutes

Director, Centre for Social Change and Transformation in Higher Education

Research clusters and groups

Founding member, Decolonising the Academy

Research projects

Invisible work, invisible knowledges

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:: 3

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest including:

-sensory ways of knowing care

-reconfiguring knowledge hierarchies in the academy

-activist research methods for researching learning underpinned by a feminist decolonising approach to understanding knowing and experience

Current doctoral researchers

REBEKKA HOELZLE

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

Title of thesis:
Migrant women’s practices of survival and resistance in the UK’s hostile environment - the necropolitics and everyday violence of the ‘subject to immigration control’ and ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy

Description:
My research explores the practices of survival and resistance in the every-day of migrant women with 'no recourse to public funds' in the UK. Migrants/refugees often find themselves subject to a testimonial imperative, having to 'tell their story', or provide evidence, most often in the context of institutional violence, i.a. at the Home Office or Social Services. I am interested in how arts-based, participatory methods can be a tool for socially engaged research that challenges these violent testimonial practices. In my work I experiment with co-creative collective practices to reclaim more radical forms of storytelling, critically explore, archive and honour diasporic knowledges. In my methods, I am working with natural material, visual as well as sound and music-based activities.

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

BEVERLEY HAYWARD

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, May 2018

Title of thesis:
Positionings, Policies and Practices in the UK's current higher education sector in the context of neo-liberalism: an exploration of the subject positions of the female learning support assistant, as they practise their art and craft in the everyday

Awarded:
2019

Teaching

I teach in the area of Education, Power and Social Change.

I currently teach on the following modules:

Education, Globalisation and Change

Education, Power and Resistances

I am Programme Director for:

Higher Education Introductory Studies (a widening access and participation programme at Birkbeck for under-represented groups in HE)

MSc Education, Power and Social Change

MPhil/PhD Education

I am Co-ordinator for the Foundation Year in Social Sciences, History & Philosophy

Teaching modules

Dissertation MA Film and Screen Media (AHVM020D7)
Education, Globalisation and Change (FDLL004S7)
Observation and the Everyday (SSPA074S4)
Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
Contemporary Global Issues: Approaches in Social Science, History and Philosophy (SSSS002S3)

Publications

Article

Harman, Kerry (2021) Sensory ways of knowing care – possibilities for reconfiguring ‘the distribution of the sensible’ in paid homecare work. International Journal of Care and Caring 5 (3), pp. 433-446. ISSN 2397-883X.
Neubauer, R. and Bohemia, E. and Harman, Kerry (2020) Rethinking design: from the methodology of innovation to the object of design. Design Issues 36 (2), pp. 18-27. ISSN 0747-9360.
Harman, Kerry (2017) A tentative return to experience in researching learning at work. Studies in Continuing Education 40 (1), pp. 17-29. ISSN 0158-037X.
Harman, Kerry (2017) Democracy, emancipation and widening participation in the UK: changing the ‘distribution of the sensible’. Studies in the Education of Adults 49 (1), pp. 92-108. ISSN 0266-0830.
Harman, Kerry (2016) Examining work – education intersections: the production of learning reals in and through practice. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults pp. 1-18. ISSN 2000-7426.
Harman, Kerry (2014) The multiple reals of workplace learning. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 5 (1), pp. 51-66. ISSN 2000-7426.
Harman, Kerry (2012) Everyday learning in a public sector workplace: the embodiment of managerial discourses. Management Learning ISSN 1350-5076.
Harman, Kerry and McDowell, L. (2011) Assessment talk in design: the multiple purposes of assessment in HE. Teaching in Higher Education 16 (1), pp. 41-52. ISSN 1356-2517.
Bohemia, E. and Harman, Kerry and McDowell, L. (2009) Intersections: the utility of an "assessment for learning" discourse for design educators. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education 8 (2), pp. 123-134. ISSN 1474-273X.
Harman, Kerry and Bohemia, E. (2007) Structure and play: rethinking regulation in the higher education sector. Industry and Higher Education 21 (5), pp. 367-374. ISSN 0950-4222.

Book

Clover, Darlene and Sanford, K. and Harman, Kerry, eds. (2022) Feminism, adult education and creative possibility: imaginative responses. Bloomsbury Critical Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350231047.
Bohemia, E. and Harman, Kerry and Lauche, K., eds. (2009) The global studio: linking research, teaching and learning. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS Press. ISBN 9781607500018.

Book Review

Harman, Kerry (2020) 'Community-based learning and social movements: popular education in a populist age.
Harman, Kerry (2018) Self-construction and social transformation: lifelong, lifewide and life-deep learning.

Book Section

Clover, D.E. and Sanford, K. and Harman, Kerry and Williamson, S. (2022) Introduction: opposites, intersections, turns, and other imaginative possibilites. In: Clover, Darlene and Harman, Kerry and Sanford, K. (eds.) Feminism, adult education and creative possibility: Imaginative responses. Bloomsbury Critical Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350231047.
Harman, Kerry (2022) Caring and the feminist imaginary: creating moments of equality when researching sensory ways of knowing homecare: toward an aesthetics of care?. In: Feminism, Adult Education and Creative Possibility: Imaginative Responses. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 197-208. ISBN 9781350231047.
Harman, Kerry (2022) Creating moments of equality when researching sensory ways of knowing homecare: toward an aesthetics of care?. In: Clover, Darlene and Harman, Kerry and Sanford, K. (eds.) Feminism, adult education and creative possibility: Imaginative responses. Bloomsbury Critical Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350231047.
Harman, Kerry (2019) Enacting equality: rethinking emancipation and adult education with Jacque Rancière. In: Finnegan, F. and Grummell, B. (eds.) Power and possibility: adult education in a diverse and complex world. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. pp. 107-116. ISBN 9789004413306.
Fraser, L. and Harman, Kerry (2019) Keeping going in austere times: the declining spaces for adult widening participation in Higher Education in England. In: Boeren, E. and James, N. (eds.) Being an Adult Learner in Austere Times: Exploring the Contexts of Higher, Further and Community Education. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 71-95. ISBN 9783319972077.
Bohemia, E. and Harman, Kerry (2006) Boundary crossing: negotiating learning outcomes in industry based student projects. In: Aung, W. and Crosthwaite, C. and Espinosa, R.V. and Moscinski, J. and Ouditt, S. and Ruiz, L.M.S. (eds.) Innovations 2006: World Innovations in Engineering Education and Research. Arlington, USA: Begell House Publishing. pp. 179-191. ISBN 974125253.

Conference Item

Reimann, N. and Harman, Kerry and Wilson, A. and McDowell, L. (2010) Learning to assess in higher education: a collaborative exploration of the interplay of "formal" and "informal" learning in the academic workplace. Questioning Theory-Method Relations in Higher Education Research: Higher Education Close Up 5, 2010, Lancaster, UK

Editorial

Clancy, S. and Harman, Kerry and Jones, I. (2022) Special issue on lived experience, learning, community activism and social change. Studies in the Education of Adults 54 (2), pp. 123-127. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. ISSN 0266-0830.

Business and community

Outreach

Recent blog: Caring about Homecare

July 2020 - convened SCUTREA Online Research Seminar: Adult education and community activism

June 2020 - Convened Birkbeck Inspires: 'How we might recognise the value of homecare provision' event.

Homecare community engagement event, June 2019 - convened a one-day homecare community engagement workshop in Wood Green, London, to bring together interested ageing and care researchers, care workers, practitioners, and policy-makers, across the UK to explore the themes identified in the stage two meetings.

September 2019 - Invited speaker at Decolonising research event - SOAS

2019: Home care worker stories film

Contributed to the Office for Fair Access (now OfA) report (2017) 'Understanding the impact of outreach on access to higher education for adult learners from disadvantaged backgrounds: an institutional response', which calls for universities to be more ambitious in reaching out to mature students

Blog Post: A toxic mix…the demise of a Widening Participation Outreach programme for low-income parents.

Blog Post: A more complete picture of enrolment trends in English universities

2015 - Invited speaker at European Conference on Education. Presented a paper titled ‘Challenging academic practices: how might we enact equality?’ as part of the ‘Challenging practices: imagining spaces of empowerment and participation’ panel.