Project Team

Evelyn is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and a Board member of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL). She has been working in the field of children’s literature and literacy for over 25 years, developing her expertise by bridging, on one hand, the theory and analysis of text and, on the other, reading and reader response. She has worked with both young adult texts and picturebooks in research with participants of different ages and across different countries, especially in Mexico. While at the University of Cambridge, together with Morag Styles, she pioneered research into children’s response to picturebooks and visual literacy; their co-authored book, Children Reading Picturebooks: Interpreting visual texts (2003/2016) is now considered a classic study in this area. In the last decade, her research projects have had a focus on migration and displacement (Visual Journeys and Journeys from Images to Words) and she built on these to develop a programme for migrant readers through the Salas de Lectura project in the Mexican Ministry of Culture (2016-2018). She has published widely in both English and Spanish.

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” 
Ursula K. LeGuin

Lavinia is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Her research and teaching are multidisciplinary as she works at the confluence of digital literacies, theories of cultural diversity and social inclusion, academic writing, translingualism and translingual pedagogy. She has recently been involved in a series of international projects, including the AHRC network, Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring how story and arts-based practices create ‘safe spaces’, as well as a British Academy project, entitled Strengthening Urban Engagement of Universities in Asia and Africa. Together with her colleague, Sally Zacharias, she has developed a British Council ELTRA project entitled Challenging the Translingual Turn: Student-Teachers’ Perceptions, Practices and Networks and a series of CPD workshops for language teachers on arts-based practices that support multilingual classrooms. For more information about her work, visit her profile and website.

Opening a book is a beautiful risk: you can find yourself or you can find someone else — either way, take the chance and turn the first page.

Julie is a Lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Language and Literacies. She has developed teacher education programmes in Scotland and the Middle East, emphasising inclusive and culturally relevant pedagogy to promote learning in diverse contexts and publishing on threshold concepts in becoming a teacher. Over the past ten years she has worked on research projects with Evelyn Arizpe, looking at the role played by children’s literature to support teachers working with New Arrival children across Europe. A focus on migration and displacement has permeated this work, published in Visual Journeys and Journeys from Images to Words. Her current work is connected to the use of directed hope and storytelling in the creation of Narratives of Change, which are used to challenge prevalent negative discourses and recount positive stories connected to identity, language and migration. Elements of this work have been embedded into creating training courses for Egyptian mediators working with picturebooks in contexts of flux.

“Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.” Ian McEwan

Susanne Abou Ghaida graduated with an MA in Sociology from the American University of Beirut (2002) before completing another MA in Children’s Literature from Roehampton University (2014). She has worked in the field of Arabic children’s literature and reading promotion since 2010, with the Anna Lindh Foundation, the UAE Board on Books for Young People and ASSABI. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Glasgow where she is preparing a doctoral thesis on the Arabic adolescent novel. She was previously involved in a research project that explored the multicultural, multimodal and multilingual potential of Arabic picture books with Scottish school students. She is one of the founders of Mersal Magazine, a blog on Arabic children’s literature.

Motawy teaches Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo and is a translator, scholar, editor, consultant, and writing coach in the area of children’s literature. Motawy was on the board of the the Egyptian Board on Books for Young People (EBBY) since its revival in 2012 until 2018. She has served on the 2016 and 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury and the 2017 Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature jury. She is currently the recipient of the Mellon Foundation postdoctoral grant where she supports interdisciplinary Arabic language knowledge production around Egyptian children’s literature.

Motawy is interested in picturebooks, speculative fiction, the metropolis in cinema and fiction, Arab YA fiction, service learning, informal education, teaching children’s writing, life narratives, and the creative writing process. In previous lives, Motawy worked in the corporate world and trained for three years to be a member of the Lakeland College of Homeopathy.

• PhD in the program History of Latin America, Indigenous Worlds, by the Pablo de Olavide University, Seville.
• Master’s degree in communication and culture from the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City
• Degree in communication from the Rafael Landívar University.
• Academic-Researcher at the Research Institute on Global and Territorial Dynamics at the Rafael Landívar University. She also collaborates with the Landívar Department of Arts.
• Teacher in undergraduate and master’s programs in the Department of Communication Sciences in the same university.
• She has worked in programs of International Cooperation: Support Program for Educational Quality, PACE of the GIZ, as responsible for the Social Dialogue component. Consultant in internal communication for the Central Agency of the German Cooperation.
• Production of media campaign in electoral context for UNOPS.
• Singer-songwriter. Her musical project seeks to generate spaces of encounter between different cultures.

Macarena is Associate Researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies from Zurich University (Switzerland) and a MA in Cultural Studies from Maastricht University (The Netherlands). She currently the leads the research project Emotional and Literary Repertoires for Childhood (funded by Fondecyt, 2018-2021), which inquires into emotional scripts in literary and media cultures for children; a project that combines narrative analysis of children’s books with empirical work with adult literary mediators and children living in marginalized communities. She is the author of Origin Narratives. The Stories We Tell Children about International Adoption and Immigration (Routledge, 2017) and of several articles on children’s texts and culture addressing topics such as cultural memory, immigration, international adoption and diversities. She has worked with the Chilean Ministry of Education developing a program for schools with a large number of foreign children. She has been a research fellow at the Internationale Jugend Bibliothek in Munich and at the Center for Cultural Studies of the University of Graz.

Cristina Amescua holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National University of Mexico (UNAM), and is a member of the faculty of the National University of Mexico’s Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research as a professor and researcher. In 2011, her essay on Disability/Handicap: From The Symbolic Form To The Social Phenomenon won the first place in the Contest “Research on Disability” organized by the Comisión De Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma De México. In 2013, her doctoral dissertation was awarded the best PhD Thesis on North America, by the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (UNAM). In 2014 she received the National University award for Young Scholars in the Social Sciences. She serves as Director for the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Heritage and Cultural Diversity and as she also chairs the IUAES Commission for Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Nadia El Kholy is Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She was Professor and Chair of the Dept. of English Language & Literature at Cairo University from 2008-2011. She is a member of the Supreme Council of Higher Education Promotions Committee for English Language & Literature and a member of the Accreditation and Evaluation Sector Committee. She served as Director of the National Council for Children’s Culture and is President of the Egyptian Book Council for Young Readers (EBBY). Most recently she was the Cultural Counsellor in London (2012-2015). She was a member of the jury for the Hans Christian Anderson international award for Children’s Literature and a member of the IBBY (international Board of Books for Young Readers) Executive Committee. She has been selected once again to be a member of the Hans Christian Anderson International Award for Children’s Literatureor 2020. She has been working as a consultant for the Glasgow project on “Using Picture Books in Contexts of Displacement”. Her research interests include writing and translation for children, Comparative and Postcolonial Literature, and Gender Studies. She has contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature, was co-editor of the Women Writing Africa series published by the Feminist Press in New York, and the ASTENE publication Egypt in the Eyes of Travellers. She has published several articles on the modern Arabic and English novel and has translated Alice in Wonderland into Arabic.

Her teaching experience:
Locally: Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University from 1979 – to date. Areas of Specialization: American Literature, Novel, Criticism, Cultural Studies, Children’s Literature, Gender Studies, Comparative Literature.
American University in Cairo: taught there for ten years at intervals. Areas of Specialization: Freshman Writing, Rhetoric & Composition, Seminar 200 (Texts that changed the world).
U.K. :University of Kent, 2010 & 2011. Taught a post graduate course on post-colonial literature.
USA: Virginia Common Wealth College, Richmond. 2007-8 and 2009. Taught courses on Egyptian Feminism and Arab Women Writers.

Cristina Vargas was born in Mexico City on February 1st, 1958. She studied Biological Sciences and Health at the Autonomous Metropolitan University. “I had my first close contact with literature outside my country, having had the opportunity to take a course and a diploma at the Sorbonne in Paris on French Language and Civilization. Having returned to Mexico City, I became for four years, English teacher, to profit the title of Teacher’s Diploma. That’s when the family immigrated for a period of six years to the city of Guadalajara where I started my professional experience as a promoter of reading in the workshop utli (path in Maya Language) and my partners and I participated with a workshop in FIL Guadalajara, the largest Book Fair in Iberoamerica, which was just beginning. Returning to my native Mexico City I worked for six years in the promotion department in the management of children’s books Fondo de Cultura Económica. This experience catapulted to devote eight years editing in the department of children’s books in Ediciones SM.” She currently develop professionally as Coordinator of the Liaison department in IBBY Mexico.

With a Master in Latin American Studies and a Law Degree, Nora Obregón is a Montessori teacher certified by the María Montessori International Center in Perugia, Italy. She has collaborated as a teacher, coordinator, director and librarian at UAEMex; Tecnológico de Monterrey, Valle de Bravo School and Formus School in Monterrey, Nuevo León.  She has developed cultural management projects, training young people as cultural bridges, and promoting reading through Kunstgalerie Valle, Todas las voces, the Reading Room Acordes Cotidianos and served as adviser of educational and cultural mediation programs for vulnerable populations, primarily migrants in Mexico, El Salvador (Hilda Rothschild Foundation) and Guatemala (UPAVIM).  She is co-founder (with María Esther Pérez Feria) of RedLEEMOS: Lecturas en Movimiento y Solidaridad, an initiative that was born during the Eighth World Social Forum on Migration (Mexico 2018).

Mirena has worked in Communication for Development, since 2000. From that area she has collaborated with international cooperation programs, that defend human rights and fight for the strengthening of educational quality in Guatemala. Along these lines, she has worked on the production of several documentaries and educational videos.

In recent years, she has specialized in the systematization of educational projects, both in writing and audiovisual, also in the production of playful tools that serve teachers to address issues such as human rights and citizenship training with their students (children and teenagers).

She currently works as an independent consultant and as a professor at the Rafael Landívar University.

Dr. in Modern Literature. Full-time researcher in the Department of Literature of the Ibero-American University where she coordinates the Diploma in Children and Youth Literature. She directs the digital publication LIJ Ibero, Magazine of Contemporary Children and Youth Literature, winner of the National and Latin American Prize “La Hormiguita ”, convened by the Popular Library “Mother Teresa” of Argentina 2017. She is a member of the National System of Researchers level 1. She has obtained three times the Research Grant Basic Scientist SEP-CONACYT for projects on Children and Youth Literature. Screenwriter, radio producer and columnist. She sat on judging panels in important national and international competitions. She has published many articles of literary criticism and chapters in anthological volumes in Spain, Great Britain, Germany, Argentina and Mexico. She is author of the following books: Irony in the early work of Rosario Castellanos, Postmodernity in Children and Youth Literature, Neosubversion in contemporary LIJ: an approach to Mexico and Spain, Children’s and youth graphic narrative and was editor of New directions in the criticism of children’s literature.

Cutzi L. M. Quezada graduated with Honorable Mention as a graduate in Latin American Letters from the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana. She obtained the Master in Teaching of a Foreign Language, as well as the Laurea Magistrale in European, American and Postcolonial Languages ​​and Literatures at the University of Ca’Foscari di Venezia. Currently, at the Universidad Iberoamericana, she is carrying out doctoral research on the metafictional album book in the collection Los Especiales de A Orilla del Viento (FCE) and the promotion of reading in Mexico. In the same institution, she manages the blog ReLIJ-Ibero, which complements the LIJ Ibero. Magazine of Contemporary Children and Youth Literature. She also coordinates the Diploma in Children and Youth Literature. She is co-investigator in “The genres of memory as a neosubversive modality of contemporary Children and Youth Literature (LIJ). A study of this trend in recent years in Mexico (2010-2018)”, a winning project of the National Scholarship for Basic Scientific Research 2017-2018 of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) of Mexico. She collaborates as a research assistant in “Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement”, a project funded by Arts and Humanities Research Concil (AHRC) in the United Kingdom. In addition, she is part of the National Reading Rooms (Salas de Lectura) Programme of the Mexican government with the Rayuela de Letras Reading Room. Her personal project includes writing notes on the promotion of reading in the blog rayueladeletrasblog.wordpress.com.

 Mónica Zárate is an educator specialised in the design and development of cultural activities and programmes addressed to children and adolescents. In 2006, Mónica completed the ‘Childhood and Adolescence in the Global Age’ coordinated by the Complutense University of Madrid, and in 2008, she received a scholarship from the Autonomous University of Madrid and University of Valencia to develop professional activities with adolescent migrants in Spain. Mónica has designed and delivered capacity building workshops with cultural promoters and managers on how to develop programmes that cater to experiences of children and young people.  

In 2018, Mónica took part in the publication of the book, La fuerza de las palabras: La fuerza de las palabras: Protocolo para una intervención cultural en situaciones de emergencia (The power of words: a protocol for cultural intervention in emergency situations), as well as the publication Para leer en contextos adversos y otros espacios emergentes (Reading in adverse contexts and other emergent spaces).

Pedagoga enfocada en la conceptualización y diseño de contenidos culturales dirigidos a niñas, niños y adolescentes. En 2006 cursó el experto Infancia y adolescencia en la era de globalización impartido por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y en 2008 fue becada por la UAM y la Universidad de Valencia para desarrollar prácticas profesionales con adolescentes migrantes en España. Ha diseñado e impartiendo cursos de capacitación para promotores y gestores culturales bajo la perspectiva de infancias y juventudes.

En 2018 participó en la creación del libro La fuerza de las palabras. Protocolo para una intervención cultural en situaciones de emergencia, así como en la publicación Para leer en contextos adversos y otros espacios emergentes.