Donna Thomas – Children’s Unexplained Experiences in a Post-Materialist World


What can children teach us about the nature of self?

 

Mainstream materialist culture often assumes children as discrete biological machines, as unformed adult human beings, without capacities for contributing to our understanding of life. Children’s unexplained experiences – those which defy materialist definitions of space, time and reality – challenge these assumptions. Often, children experience naturally occurring phenomena such as so-called imaginary companions and realities, telepathy, premonitions, peak and out of body experiences. Such experiences are often construed as disorder or fantasy, and responded to in ways that can generate unnecessary suffering for children.

Collaborative research with children shows how their experiences, insights and intuitions can meet with emerging post-materialist ideas in scientific and philosophical scholarship. Children and their unexplained experiences call for an interrogation of mainstream materialism and can contribute to wider social transformation.  In this talk, I will discuss these ideas, arguing for new ways of thinking about and being with children, as beings-in-their-own-right and in their ‘becomings’ as our future generation.

About the speaker:

 

 

Donna Thomas is a Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire UK. Donna leads on a programme of research that explores the nature of self and experience with children and young people. Examining living experience as a source of epistemic authority has been a focus of research with children over the last 20 years. Donna has published several academic papers on the topics of children and self, extra sensory experiences and participatory research methodologies. Donna has authored: Children’s Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World July, 2023 (John Hunt Publishing) and co-authored Self and Subjectivity in Social Research (Sage, forthcoming) with Deborah Crook.


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Date

Apr 19 2023

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Local Time

  • Timezone: America/New_York
  • Date: Apr 19 2023
  • Time: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

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Location

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Speaker

  • Donna Thomas
    Donna Thomas
    Research fellow

    Donna Thomas is a Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire UK. Donna leads on a programme of research that explores the nature of self and experience with children and young people. Examining living experience as a source of epistemic authority has been a focus of research with children over the last 20 years. Donna has published several academic papers on the topics of children and self, extra sensory experiences and participatory research methodologies. Donna has authored: Children’s Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World July, 2023 (John Hunt Publishing) and co-authored Self and Subjectivity in Social Research (Sage, forthcoming) with Deborah Crook.