This conference is shaped by three Māori whakataukī (ancestral sayings, proverbs). Each whakataukī holds layers of meaning that cannot be contained by a single translation. Instead of offering fixed definitions, we invite you to encounter them as openings—poetic guides that call us into reflection, relation, and conversation. For each whakataukī, we provide both the original words and a written unfurling of what it might speak to in the context of our gathering. These unfurlings are not definitive but are shared as invitations. This is not a typical call for papers. It is a call for papers, presentations, performances, and provocations.

 

• Read with openness: allow the whakataukī to stir your own ways of seeing, knowing, and doing.
• Listen for resonance: notice what inspires you, challenges you, or feels connected to your work.
• Respond in dialogue: consider how your research, practice, or creative work speaks to and is spoken to by one or more of these whakataukī.

 

Alongside each unfurling, we also offer some ideas and prompts to help you imagine possible connections. Even so, if your mahi (work) does not sit neatly within these framings, we warmly welcome your submission. The whakataukī are guides, not gates.

Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu 

Adorn the bird with feathers and it will fly 

This proverb speaks to flight. The Tūī is adorned with an elaborate cloak of ebony feathers.  When the primaries stretch out, they are streaked and illuminated with iridescent traces of purple, blue and green.  When the Karearea (falcon) sheers into the sky, it soars with its chiefly crown of slate grey, speckled pinions and yellow-ringed eyes pierced. These brave flights inspire us to think of empowerment, movement, agility and the ability to ascend. Where does the crowned bird fly, to the mountains of the south? Towards change? To launch a resistance? To a new resolve? Each flight signals activation. Each flight soars to new heights.  Each flight signals the marvellous mechanics inherent in the wing.

The wonder of the Kuaka/Godwit’s annual journey from Alaska to Aotearoa stirs our thinking, along with the Tītī that can forage as far as to the mysteries of Antarctica. The magic of the birds in flight inspires us—as academics, educators, activists, artists and scholars of gender and education—to speculation and to innovation.  Casting our eyes upwards to follow the brilliance of the Toroa (albatross) as it glides into the ether, with it we begin to see beyond boundaries, that are now opened up in the sheer expanse of the sky. The limits are moved, shaken, survived, reinscribed, and urged onwards and upwards by these messengers of the gods riding on the winds.  For us here, journeys will be taken in our fields and practices, that are replete with the old memories of the currents and that will cast new lines of flight.

Inspired by this whakataukī, we welcome presentations that explore:

• Border-crossings and by-ways: storying intersectionality in education  
• Gender and education in the political zeitgeist  
• Multiplicities, pluralities in gender and sexuality education as sites of becoming  
• Poetries, arts-based pedagogies as gender activism  
• Postcolonial intersections and encounters in Aotearoa, the Pacific and beyond  
• Philosophy and pedagogy across gender boundaries
• Nomadic theory as feminist pedagogy  
• Hydrofeminism and education  
• “We make the road by walking”: gender and ecopedagogy  
• Pacific feminist climate activism as global pedagogy  
• Gender and class
• Taking flight with posthuman feminism  
• Gender(ed) becomings with the more-than-human
• Murmurations and collective movement
• Looking to the skies and dreaming otherwise

He rākau taumatua, he huihuinga manu 

When a tree has many branches, birds all gather 

This proverb speaks to connection.  At the core of its symbolism is the ancient tree. The kōwhai with its yellow fluted blooms rich in nectar attracting the tiny moss green Rauhou (silvereye) and the eloquent Korimako (bellbird).  These smaller birds also find shelter amongst the red brushed blooms of the coastal pōhutakawa. The kotukutuku (tree fuschia) is a gathering place for plump white bellied Kererū (NZ wood pigeon) that feast on its berries, their festive play performed high up on the limbs the giant rimu and diving into the purple fruited taraire. Here, the whakataukī inspires us to reflection on the possibilities of our gathering, as space for interconnection, encouragement, solidarity arising out of our coming together. The whakataukī holds the tree and its branches as a central element. Can the tree grow without its roots firmly planted?  Here we come together in this way, with respect for our antecedents, the roots of our gathering, guiding us as we engage with the problems and possibilities of the future—new branches, new leaves, and new fruits.  Listen carefully when you pass under such a tree and you will hear the Tūī sing, the Kākā chatter and the Kererū coo.  And from behind you, their soft susurration.  

Inspired by this whakataukī, we welcome presentations that explore:

• Aroha (love) and tūmanako (hope) in sexuality education  
• Disobedience, mischief and play as resistance in education  
• Womanism and education
• Gender and education histories and futures Entanglements of ecology and gender  
• Towards inclusion in gender, sexuality and culture in education  
• Time, space and place in gender and sexuality education  
• Indigenous wisdom as site of inspiration in gender and education
• Rongo (sensing, seeing, feeling) and embodied identities  
• Kaitiakitanga (stewardship) and inclusivity   
• Nesting –practices of solidarity and care
• Moulting, regeneration and transformation

E koekoe te tūī, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū 

The Tūī chatters, the Kākā gabbles, the Kererū coos 

In the canopy of the forest, each bird sings in its own way: e koekoe te Tūī, pure, layered tones that ring like the kōauau (flute); e ketekete te kākā, startling croaks but then haunting calls at dusk; e kūkū te kererū, deep and soft, like nguru (nose flute). These calls do not compete but converge, and together creating a soundscape of difference that is wild and whole. This soundscape inspires the setting of our gathering: a space where all bodies, neurodiversities, sexualities and genders belong—with air to breathe, a variety of fruits that nurture and branches to rest upon. As migratory Kuaka returns with the seasons, so too do we return—to this gathering, to its kaupapa, to the need to continue to reimagine and revitalize Gender and Education as a shared forest of diverse knowledges and practices. Here, we are inspired to venerate not the sameness of our flight, but the fertile vitality of the differences in our song.The calls of Aotearoa’s birds are distinct, and their chorus symphonic.

Inspired by this whakataukī, we welcome presentations that explore:

• New voices in sexuality education and affirmative ethics  
• Reinscribing ability/disability discourses in education  
• Multiplicities, pluralities in gender and sexuality education as sites of becoming  
• Trans and non-binary voices in education  
• Takatāpui/rainbow epistemologies and communities
• Public pedagogies in gender/sexuality education
• Inviting pluralities as a mode of inquiry in sexuality education  
• Queering gender, sexuality and culture in education  
• Plumage and the (in)visibility of queer and feminine bodies
• Queer storytelling and birdsong

 

Conference contribution formats 
We are hoping to create a space for creatives, provocateurs, activists and scholars to contribute in ways that support the theme. These could be, but are not restricted to:  

• Individual paper (15 mins + 5 mins questions)

• Collaboration (60 mins; for example, panel session, symposia, roundtable - please give details)

• Workshop / Interactive session (60 mins)

• Performance / Creative work (please indicate timing)

• Poster, art or media exhibition installation (please explain space requirement)

• Other

Call Timeline & Submission

Abstracts submission opens - December 2025     

Abstract submissions close- 15 March 2026

Acceptance notification for early abstracts- 28 February 2026

Final abstract acceptance notification- 30 April 2026

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If problems persist, fill in this document and email it to GEA.2026@aut.ac.nz