Rate My Professor Sarah Crinall

Dr Sarah Maree Crinall is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Southern Cross University, based at the Coffs Harbour Campus since January 2022. She obtained her Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Graduate Diploma in Education (GradDipEd) from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from Western Sydney University in 2017. Her PhD thesis, 'Blogging art and sustenance: Artful everyday life (making with water)', examined art-based practices in sustaining childhood natures through engagements with water. Previously, she was affiliated with Western Sydney University, where she contributed as an Honorary Adjunct Research Fellow in the Centre for Educational Research, and held positions including at Swinburne University of Technology.

Dr Crinall's academic interests focus on science childhoods, place-based relational philosophies of education, and art-based methodologies. She explores the power of the practical, the ethical, and the 'everyday' in informal learning ecologies that families and communities inhabit, with emphasis on sustenance in education, particularly during early years motherhood. Her scholarship contributes to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and is part of the Sustainability, Environment, and the Arts in Education (SEAE) Research Cluster at Southern Cross University. Notable publications include her monograph 'Sustaining Childhood Natures: The Art of Becoming with Water' (Springer, 2019); 'Growing communities in a garden undone: worldly justice, sustenance and children otherwise' (Genealogy, 2020, with Simone M. Blom); 'A place with no time: re-conceptualising child–adult relations during "homeschooling" in the 2020 pandemic' (Children's Geographies, 2020, with Edith Rowbottom, Xanthia Blom, and Simone Blom); 'Disruptions of Post-Qualitative Education Research: Tensions and Openings' (Qualitative Inquiry, 2022, with Tracy Young and Karen Malone); 'Academia's Breath: Oxygenating Academia One Creative, Embodied Breath at a Time' (SOTL in the South, 2023); 'Earth's Love Letters: Locating loving pedagogies' (Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 2025, with Nicholas R.G. Stanger); and 'Heartwork: doing early childhood initial teacher education differently' (Qualitative Research Journal, 2026). According to Google Scholar, her work has been cited 175 times, with research interests spanning place, philosophy, post-qualitative approaches, science, and arts.