Brooke Richardson (she/her) is a care activist, scholar and mother motivated by the belief that good care is foundational to meaningful lives and a democratic society. Brooke completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), first in Early Childhood Studies and then shifting to Policy Studies (focus on childcare policy). Her research and scholarly work focus on reimagining child welfare systems through a feminist ethics of care lens, the political positioning of child care in contemporary welfare states, reconceptualizing and reasserting care in early childhood education and child welfare settings, and the ongoing professionalization of gendered unpaid and (poorly) paid care labour. She has published and presented nationally and internationally on topics related to caring for children and published two edited volumes in 2022: Feminisms and the Early Childhood Educator: Critical Conversations (Bloomsbury) and Mothering on the Edge: A Critical Examination of Mothering within Child Protection Systems (Demeter Press).
She is currently editing a follow-up book to Mothering on the Edge titled, Voices from the edge: First person voices of mothers who have survived child protection systems (Demeter Press, projected publication fall 2025). She is also excited to be working with her ECE colleagues to edit a forthcoming anthology titled Disrupting Developmentalism in Canadian Early Years Education: Critical Activist Knowledges (Canadian Scholars Press, projected publication winter 2025).
Finally, Brooke makes a concerted effort to remain active in the communities with whom she studies and works. Brooke was the President of the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario from 2018-2022 and is now taking a leadership role in the Child Welfare Truth Telling Collective (Canada and U.S.) and the Child Welfare Advocacy Coalition (Nova Scotia).
Selected publications
Books
Richardson, B. (2022). Mothering on the edge: A critical examination of mothering within child protection. Demeter Press.
Richardson, B. & Langford, R. (2022). The early childhood educator: Critical conversations in feminist theory. Feminist Thought in Childhood Research, Volume 5. Bloomsbury.
Peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters
Davies, A., Richardson, B., Abawi, Z. (2024). Re-Imagining the Image of the Teacher in Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education: Calling for Onto-Epistemological Justice. Pedagogy, Culture and Society. 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2024.2355100
Richardson, B., Vickerson, R., & Bader, N. (2023). Falling by the “wasteside”: Defining and moving towards educator well-being from the perspective of ECEs in Ontario, Canada. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/18369391231211023
Richardson, B., Cook, K., Breitkreuz, R., & Wu, B. (2023). Writing gender in: Pandemic childcare policy responses in Australia and Canada. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1554477X.2023.2201916
Richardson, B., Powell, A., Johnston, L. & Langford, R. (2023). Reconceptualizing activism through a feminist care ethics in the Ontario, Canada early childhood education context: Enacting caring activism. Social Sciences, 12(2). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/2/89
Lehrer, J. & Richardson, B. (2023). Resisting children as human capital. In M. Vandenbroeck, J. Lehrer and L. Mitchell (Eds). The Decommodification of Early Childhood Education: Resisting Neoliberalism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003218104
Richardson, B., & Langford, R. (2022). Care-full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14639491221120037?journalCode=ciea
Richardson, B., Prentice, S., & Lero, D. (2021). “I’m kind of in a dilemma”: The Challenges of Non-standard Work Schedules and Childcare. Community, Work and Families. http://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2021.2007048
Richardson, B., Powell, A., & Langford, R. (2021). Critiquing Ontario’s childcare policy responses to the inextricably connected needs of mothers, children and early childhood educators. Journal of Childhood Studies, 46(3) 1-15. https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs463202119951
Richardson, B. (2021). Commodification and care: An exploration of workforces’ experiences of care in private and public childcare systems from a feminist political theory of care perspective. Critical Social Policy, April 2021. http://doi.org/10.1177/0261018321998934
Richardson, B. & Langford, R. (2019). Citizen engagement in childcare policy: Examining childcare policy problematizations in Canadian newspaper articles from 2008 to 2015. In S. Phillipson and S. Garvis (Eds), Volume III Early Childhood Education in the 21st Century: Teachers and families (pp. 23-37). London, UK: Routledge.