EVELYN ARIZPE
Evelyn Arizpe is Professor of Children’s Literature at the School of Education, University of Glasgow. She is the Programme Lead for the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree programme, “Children’s Literature, Media and Cultural Entrepreneurship”. Her research examines picturebooks alongside themes of displacement, conflict and peacebuilding. She has been on the jury for the Hans C. Andersen Award (2022 & 2024) and is Past President of the International Research Society on Children’s Literature (IRSCL).
SARA VAN DEN BOSSCHE
Sara Van den Bossche is Assistant Professor of Youth Cultures and Literatures at Tilburg University (the Netherlands). Her main teaching and research topics are ethnic and cultural diversity, feminism, ideology criticism, cognitive criticism, canonisation, adaptation, picturebooks, and crossover literature. Since 2019, she has been teaching in the Erasmus Mundus International Master “Children’s Literature, Media, and Culture” (CLMC). She has co-guest-edited special issues of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, DiGeSt, and Barnboken on cognitive approaches to and diversity in children’s literature. She is the author of the upcoming books Routledge Engagements with Children’s Literature (with Lydia Kokkola) and Pippi Longstocking, Critically.
Social media: @SaraZweeds
MACARENA GARCÍA-GONZÁLEZ
Macarena García-González currently holds a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Glasgow. Her research brings together cultural studies, posthumanist philosophies and critical childhood studies. She has authored Origin Narratives. The Stories We Tell Children about Immigration and International Adoption (Routledge, 2017), and Enseñando a sentir. Repertorios éticos en la ficción infantil (2021) and has co-edited Children’s Cultures After Childhood (John Benjamins, 2023) with Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Campo en Formación. Textos clave para la literatura infantil a juvenil (Metales Pesados, 2023) with Evelyn Arizpe and Andrea Casals. She currently prepares the research monograph The Borders of Empathy in Children’s Fiction (Routledge, forthcoming). She served the IRSCL board between 2019 and 2023 and was the convener of the 25th IRSCL Congress from Santiago de Chile. She is associate editor at Children’s Literature in Education.
ANITA NAIR
Anita Nair is one of India’s most acclaimed authors. Her oeuvre ranges from literary fiction to noir to poetry to children’s literature to translation. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages around the world, and include 9 novels, a short story collection, a book of poems titled Malabar Mind, a collection of essays titled Goodnight & God Bless and seven books for children. She has also translated into English T.S. Pillai’s Malayalam cult classic Chemmeen. She has also edited a book of writings on Kerala titled Where the Rain is Born.
Anita Nair has also written two plays and the screenplay for the movie adaptation of her novel Lessons in Forgetting which was part of the Indian Panorama at IFFI 2012 and won the National Film Award in 2013. She is the recipient of several prizes and honours, including the Central Sahitya Akademi award and the Crossword Prize.
As the founder of the creative writing mentorship program Anita’s Attic, she has mentored over 100 writers.
Anita Nair is a High-Profile Supporter of the UNHCR and a literary curator for GajUtsav Campaign, an initiative by the Wildlife Trust of India.
Anita Nair’s new novel is Hot Stage, third in the Inspector Gowda noir series.
JESÚS MOYA-GUIJARRO
Jesús Moya-Guijarro is Professor at the Faculty of Education in the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). He has published extensively on multimodal discourses in international journals. He is co- editor together with Eija Ventola of ‘A Multimodal Approach to Challenging Gender Stereotypes’ (2022, Routledge) and of ‘The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues’ (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). He has also authored ‘A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children’ (2014, Equinox).
LEN UNSWORTH
Len Unsworth is Professor in English and Literacies Education at the Australian Catholic University. Len’s current research interests include systemic functional semiotic perspectives on multimodal and digital disciplinary literacies and in English curricula. His most recent books include Multimodal Literacy in School Science: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Theory, Research and Pedagogy (Routledge, 2022) and Reading Images for Knowledge Building: Analysing Infographics in School Science – with Jim Martin (Routledge, 2023).