Bush fires are extraordinarily dangerous and possess precarious capacity for growth and destruction. Driven by changeable winds, bushfires devour, transform, and territorialise. In the immediate period after fires school communities swing into actions of care and recovery.  Crisis leadership plays a critical role in navigating the aftermath of these devastating events that causes catastrophic harm and leave long-lasting impacts on communities (Striepe & Cunningham, 2021).Leadership from a posthuman perspective reworks notions of solely human agency as more-than-human relations between human and non-human bodies produces distributed subjectivity (Fairchild, 2019).  Moreover, ‘selves’ are not individual subjects, but are collective enunciations that are produced through the processes and movements with assemblages (Strom & Lupinacci, 2019).

 The more-than-human entanglement of fire, schools, communities, wildlife, and the anthropogenic landscape provoke a challenging debate around ethics of care. This study embraces critical posthumanism, which challenges the traditional centrism of the human in ethical discourse (Taylor, 2018). Specifically the aftermath of bushfires are examined through the lenses of affect and ethico-onto-epistemology. Ethical considerations during crisis leadership are reframed as an interplay of relationships, engagements, and entanglements, emphasising material interactions that encompass more than just human actors. The engagement of posthuman concepts enable ethical and political affordances that fracture binary dualisms and discourses. (Fairchild, 2019). Drawing on new materialism we conceptualise the post- bushfire aftermath as spaces for ethico-onto-epistemological mattering. The physical devastation and recovery are inextricably linked to ethical, ontological, and epistemological dimensions.

Ethico- onto-espitemology foregrounds the moral dimensions of our interactions with the world (Barad, 2007). Ethics are immanent so that ethical considerations are not external to us but arise from relations. Therefore ethics, ontology, and epistemology are not separate domains but are deeply intertwined, with our ethical decisions (ethico-) are influenced by our understanding of being (onto-) and our knowledge (epistemology) (Geerts & Carstens, 2019). In short, our way of knowing the world is shaped by our ethical positions and our ontological understandings

In the aftermath of fires, the challenges are shaped by uncertainty and moving frontiers (Drysdale & Gurr, 2017; Mutch, 2015; Smith & Riley, 2012).  As Bozalek suggests “research is a matter of opening possibilities and immersion in the indeterminancy of the world, which is never settled. It is about being aware of how one part of the world makes itself intelligible to another part of the world and what matters in the flourishing of the world, where politics, ethics, ontology and epistemology are intertwined” (2021, 147). At every step the affective encounter is new and different; and unknown. “Affect is a material encounter where we  change in relation to an experience” (Hickey-Moody, 2009).

This research into school leadership during such crises addresses the nexus between destruction and regeneration. Bushfires are more than freely occurring natural disasters; they are active agents that reshape landscapes, lives, and communities. They challenge a traditional human-centered perspective of leadership and crisis management by highlighting the significant role of non-human elements in these scenarios. The immediate actions of care and recovery in school communities post-bushfires, as observed by Striepe & Cunningham (2021), demonstrate a collective, emergent response, transcending individual human efforts. This collective response is a manifestation of Fairchild's (2019) concept of distributed subjectivity, where the agency is not just a human attribute but a product of the interplay between humans, nature, and the environment. The catastrophic impact of bushfires necessitates a leadership approach that acknowledges this interconnectedness.

The study is based on semi-structured interviews with five school leaders who navigated their communities through catastrophic fire events. The use of a Deleuzian ontology (after Mazzei, 2013), enables voice to be positioned as an entanglement that conjoins other enactments within the messiness of assemblages. It is a “collision of forces, a machinic assemblage of becomings” (Mazzei, 2013, p. 737), of leaders affecting and affected by the vital matter of human and non-human bodies. As interviewers we were “produced in the making and doing of the interview” (Mazzei, 2013, p. 737) and our analysis focused on the entanglement of human and non-human actors in crisis situations.The research incorporates affect theory recognising the entanglements between institutions, matter, and communities. Using concept as method, specifically the notions of affect, and ethico-onto-epistemological mattering, we consider the amplification of ethical care in the relational experiences after bushfires. Affect provides a lens to understand the emotional and visceral responses that are activated in the wake of bushfires. The research examines how affect flows in these fire aftermath contexts and impact decisions of school leaders. This approach recognises the complex interplay between emotions, physical matter, and community dynamics in shaping crisis responses. Recognising that communities are potentially vulnerable; this research seeks out the nuances of borderlands in work of school leaders, communication, technologies and more-than human assemblages. Often sitting outside the obligations of the educational institution, the care(ful) work is both crafted, and responsive. Through this new materialist lens we see possibilities for a thinking about these assemblages of mattering and ethical care as entangled but generative thresholds. New configurations of knowledge emerge through this engagement with critical care amid crisis. We seek out the “speculative, afftecive, atmospheric, transversal, pre-personal, involuntary and inventive” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2024, p. 1) In this work we recognise the value of postfoundational inquiry , that begins with thinking with theory of continuous coming into being and becoming but also the multiple possibilities that can unfold and indeed as Rosiek and Pratt remind us of the loss of “the roads not taken”. (2024, p. 205). Thus we note the ethical responsibility entwined in theoretical and methodological choices.

Posthumanist thinking provides opportunity to decentre and rethink the human subject and its potential for agency (Fairchild, 2019). It reveals the interconnectedness of leaders, community members, environmental factors, and infrastructural elements in shaping crisis responses. Furthermore, we can examine the ethical relations and “micropolitics of connectivity” in more-than-human relationality (Fairchild, 2019, 53) associated with leading through crisis events. This perspective challenges anthropocentric views of leading, highlighting the importance of considering a broader network of influences in crisis leadership. The research delves into how the immediate, lived experiences of school leaders in the post-bushfire context, entangled with both human and non-human elements, influence their professional journeys. Effective crisis leadership in schools transcend traditional human-centered approaches. By integrating a posthumanist perspective, this study underscores the significance of acknowledging the complex web of relations and factors that influence decision-making and communication during crises. Taylor's (2018) critique of human-centric ethical frameworks is particularly pertinent here. Post-bushfire (crisis) leadership calls for an ethical approach that encompasses more-than-human considerations and an ethico-onto-epistemology, which blurs the lines between ethics, ontology, and epistemology, suggesting moral choices that are deeply connected to our understanding of being and knowledge. By adopting an ethico-onto-epistemological approach, the study reflects on how the material conditions and ethical considerations intertwine in shaping school leaders’ responses to bushfires. The physical devastation and the journey to recovery is not just a material process but is also requires an ethical and epistemological response that is premised on a holistic, and interconnected understanding of crisis management. The affective entanglements of those everchanging challenges must be navigated through an unforeseen terrain. This research sheds light on the knowledge making that occurs in this in this precarious space.

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