Research

Join us for a seminar with Kate Schick and Claire Timperley from Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington on Wednesday 14th October, 14.00-16.00 in Rm 139, Boardroom in 25 Bute Gardens. 

Many of us have inherited a vision of education that emphasises Euromodern ideals of objectivity, rationality, certainty and individualism. These ideals are incentivised by the market-driven, neoliberal imperatives of contemporary higher education, which position students as consumers and degrees as a form of capital. For over a decade, we have contested this framing of pedagogy, arguing that learning is deeply contextual, relational and embodied. In our nascent book project, we ask: what if we refuse rationalist visions of education to teach politics otherwise?

In this seminar, we share our conceptualisation of a pedagogy of refusal, exploring four strands of refusal that contest dominant assumptions of Euromodern pedagogy via the centring of relationality, care, vulnerability and community. We provide examples of the ways this subversive vision can inform alternative teaching practices.

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Kate Schick is Associate Professor of International Relations at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. Her research lies at the intersection of critical theory and international political theory, with an emphasis on relational, embodied, and place-based theory and practice. Kate is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and has been sharing her work on creative and critical pedagogies for over a decade in both politics and higher education journals. Her teaching practice has been recognised through multiple teaching awards including the Te Whatu Kairangi Tertiary Educator Award (2023), the British International Studies Association Award for Distinguished Excellence in Teaching (2022), and the Victoria University of Wellington Teaching Excellence Award (2022).

Claire Timperley is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her teaching and research interests include feminist political theory, gender politics, critical pedagogy, and the politics of Aotearoa New Zealand. Her pedagogical approach draws on critical and feminist theories to highlight the importance of relational and embodied approaches to learning and her research on pedagogy has been published in both political science and higher education journals. Her teaching has been recognised through several teaching awards, including the British International Studies Association Award for Distinguished Excellence in Teaching (2022) and the Victoria University of Wellington Teaching Excellence Award (2022).

First published: 22 September 2026