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International Seminar on Children’s and Young Adult Literature in a Transnational Perspective

The Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Faculty of Letters at the University of Wrocław warmly invite you to a series of academic lectures delivered by international guests visiting under the University’s IDUB Visiting Professors Programme. The meetings will take place during the international seminar Transcultural and Transnational Perspectives on Children’s and Young Adult Literature (as part of Reading – Experiences – Emotions. Books for Children and Young Adults – Theory and Practice of Reception [X]) and the anniversary celebration of the journal Filoteknos.

The event will be held on 22 October 2025 at the Institute of Polish Studies of the University of Wrocław, at Plac Nankiera 15b in Nehring Hall (Room 22). As part of the Excellence Initiative – Research University (IDUB), three lectures have been scheduled:

• 9:15–10:05 – Åse Marie Ommundsen (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway):
  “Captivated by the Text: Cognitively Challenging Picturebooks and Inclusive Education.”
• 10:10–11:00 – Xavier Mínguez-López (University of Valencia, Spain):
  “It’s the Teacher, Not the Book: Rethinking the Role of Literature in Intercultural Education.”
• 11:05–12:00 – Georgia (Tzina) Kalogirou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece):
  “Migrants, Nomads and Identity in Children’s Literature.”

Biographical notes of the invited scholars are presented below:

• Lecture entitled Captivated by the Text: Cognitively Challenging Picturebooks and Inclusive Education will by delivered by prof. Åse Marie Ommundsen (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway); Inviting professor: dr hab. Mateusz Świetlicki, prof. UWr (Institute of English Studies, Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures)

Åse Marie Ommundsen is Professor of Scandinavian literature in the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), Norway. Her interest in children’s literature, multimodal texts and picturebooks for adults has fostered numerous publications as well as guest lectures and keynotes. She is the author of several books, book-chapters, and international journal articles in Norwegian, Danish, English, French, Persian, and Dutch. Ommundsen is the editor of Looking Out and Looking In: National Identity in Picturebooks of the New Millennium (Novus 2013) and coeditor of Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education: International perspectives on language and literature learning (with Gunnar Haaland and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Routledge 2022), among others. She has served for two years in the Arts Council Norway and in the Brage Prize Jury. In 2013, she was awarded the Kari Skjønsberg Award for her research on children’s literature. She chairs the research group Challenging Picturebooks in Education and the research project Inclusive Learning with Challenging Picturebooks.

• Lecture entitled It’s the Teacher, Not the Book: Rethinking the Role of Literature in Intercultural Education will by delivered by prof. Xavier Mínguez-López (University of Valencia, Spain); Inviting professor: dr hab. Dorota Michułka, prof. UWr (Institute of English Studies, Faculty of Languages, Literatures and Cultures)

He is an associate professor at the University of Valencia (Faculty of Teacher Training) and a member of ERI-Lectura (research centre). He holds a PhD in Literary and Language Education and a degree in Catalan Philology. His research focuses on children’s and young adult literature, literary competences, intercultural education, and the use of media in literary education. He has published several articles in indexed international journals, such as Animation, Bookbird, Intercultural Education, Marvels and Tales, Ikala, and Literacy, on topics such as socio-cultural gender, multiculturalism, literary theory and educational practices, and children’s literature theory and criticism. The subject of his doctoral thesis was interculturalism (Extraordinary Doctoral Award). He was a scholarship holder at the National University of Yokohama (Japan 2001–2002), the University of Roehampton (2011), the International Youth Library (2018), and Harvard University (2025). He has also led educational cooperation projects in Mali, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia, focusing in particular on teacher training. As part of his recent research, in collaboration with Harvard lecturers, he is investigating the real impact of children’s books on intercultural competence. He collaborates with researchers from Europe and Latin America and is co-editor of the international Journal of Literary Education. As an author of children’s books, he has received numerous awards.

• Lecture entitled Migrants, Nomads and Identity in Children’s Literature will by delivered by prof. Georgia (Tzina) Kalogirou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece); Inviting professor: dr hab. Justyna Bajda, prof. UWr (Institute of English Studies, Faculty of Letters)

Georgia (Tzina) Kalogirou is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities/Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, specializing in Modern Greek Literature and its Didactics. She is the Director of the Interdepartmental Postgraduate Programme Rhetoric, Human Sciences, and Education (Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education, NKUA – Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Western Macedonia), which has been re-established under the title Rhetoric, Communication, and Creative Writing in Education. She also directs the Postgraduate Programme of the School of Humanities, titled ‘Social Sciences and Humanities in Education’. She has served as Deputy Chair of the Department of Primary Education (2019–2020 and 2024–2025) and as Head of the School of Humanities (2021–2022 and currently). Additionally, she serves as Director of the Laboratory for Applied Linguistics, Literary, and Rhetorical Studies. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of books (in Greek and English) and numerous chapters/papers (in Greek, English, French, and Italian) in edited volumes, international and national journals, and conference proceedings. She is a member of the scientific and organisational committees of the cyclical international conference The Child and the Book and editor-in-chief (together with Xavier Minguez Lopez) of the international „Journal of Literary Education”. She is also an official partner of the international research project TALIS, implemented within the Memită network: Memory, Identity, Integration to Identify Analysis Mode/s in Media Communication, which includes researchers from 20 universities around the world. She is also a member of the scientific committees of the ‘Laboratorio Children’s Books’ publishing series, published by the prestigious publishing house Anicia Edizioni-Rome, Niata, and a member of the international scientific committee of Triskeles. Collana mediterranea di storia, letteratura e varia umanistica. The latest works published under the editorship of Prof. Kalogirou are The Silver School Bag. Creative teaching approaches for the Literary Classroom (2024) and Aspects of Time and Memory in Literature for Children and Young Adults: Mnemosyne for Children (Cambridge Scholar 2024) (with Dorota Michułka).

International seminar programme

9.00 – 9.15 – Opening 
9:15-12:30 – “Excellence Initiative – Research University” (IDUB) – Keynote lectures

• Åse Marie Ommundsen 9:15-10:05 – “Captivated by the Text: Cognitively Challenging Picturebooks and Inclusive Education”
• Xavier Mínguez–López 10:10-11:00 – “It’s the Teacher, Not the Book: Rethinking the Role of Literature in Intercultural Education”
• Tzina Kalogirou 11:05-12:00 – “Migrants, Nomads and Identity in Children’s Literature”

12:00-12:30 Discussion
12:30-12:45 Coffee break 
12:45-14:00 Session 1
Wojciech Małecki – “Measuring the Power of Story: An Empirical Framework”
Vasiliki Oikonomopoulou – “Intercultural Readings of Children’s Books on Cultural Diversity”
Anastasia Ulanowicz – “Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger’s Swimming with Spies and the Role of North American Publishers in Representations of the Russia-Ukraine War”
Anna Kobylowska – “Young People and Sociopolitical Shifts: The Cold War, the LGBTQ+ Community, and Chinese Americans in American Historical Fiction”
14:00-15:00 Lunch break
15:00-16:20 Session 2
Michał Wolski – “Marvel’s Inhumanity: A Contemporary Approach to Multiculturalism and Migration in Comics”
Mateusz Świetlicki – “We’re All in this Together: Transnational Immigrant Families in Canadian Children’s Historical Fiction”
Dorota Michułka – “Childhood (Re)constructed. Memory, Myth and Reality in Contemporary Polish Literature for Young Adults [based on the novels Strupki by Paulina Jóźwik (2019) and Nigdzie by Małgorzata Boryczka (2022)]”
16:30-17:00
Filoteknos 15th Anniversary Jubilee
17:30 Dinner

The seminar was prepared within the framework of the international project “(Self)Positioning in Transnational Spaces – Children’s Narratives and Narratives about Children Living Transnationally”, also known as “TraNa”, funded by Weave Unisono, DFG/NCN (2023/05/Y/HS6/00266). The keynote lectures are organized as part of the University of Wrocław’s Visiting Professors “Excellence Initiative – Research University” (IDUB) program.

Date of publication: 7.10.2025
Added by: M.K.