New fellows to explore book and publishing cultures

Three new Visiting Research Fellows have been announced for 2022-2023: Dr Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz, Dr Simona Di Martino, and Dr Margarida Castellano Sanz.

Working with the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP), Dr Wieczorkiewicz, Dr Di Martino and Dr Castellano will shape new projects using the University of Reading’s Archives and Special Collections relating to book and publishing cultures.

Dr Wieczorkiewicz is a lecturer and researcher in the Children’s Literature & Culture Research Team at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She is a researcher in a Polish National Science Centre project in which the study of children’s press and the contribution of translated literature is an important component.

For her CBCP fellowship, Dr Wieczorkiewicz will be drawing upon the children’s collections to explore translated literature in British children’s periodicals during the Victorian era, looking at what this tells us about how young audiences were shaped by the texts.

Dr Di Martino is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing at the University of London, where her research explores the ways in which magic girls represented generations of young girls in Italian literature. She also holds a Jeffs Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, where she works on the Anglo-Italian author Mary Cowden and her construction of characters that act as role models for young girls.

Dr Di Martino will be using the University collections to assess the impact that heroines and female role models from comic strips and magazines played on the making of British and Italian girls’ identities from the 1950s to today.

Dr Margarida Castellano Sanz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Literature Teaching at the University of València. She has been awarded with research fellow scholarships at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Queen Mary University of London and Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), and was the former director of the CEFIRE specific of Multilingualism (Centro de Formación, Innovación y Recursos para el Profesorado), and General Director of Education Innovation and Academic Planning for the Valencian Government. She is currently a member of the research groups Lit(T)erart, ELCIS and LIJMI.

Dr Castellano’s research with CBCP will focus on using children and young adults’ literature to enhance students’ critical thinking. Specifically, her interests are aligned with the CBCP annual conference Publishing Anti-fascism; she will investigate how contemporary picture books and graphic novels shape audiences through an anti-fascism awareness in a global perspective.

CBCP undertakes research in book cultures and publishing with a distinctive global, multilingual and multidisciplinary focus. Research in the Centre aims to explore the ways in which books are produced, distributed and read in global contexts today and in the past.

Sophie Heywood, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures and Co-Director of CBCP, said: “We are delighted to welcome two new Visiting Fellows to the centre. They will be using the University’s collections to explore book and publishing cultures from ancient wall paintings and digital media to children’s periodicals from the Victorian era.”

The fellows are expected to develop their research into an application for an externally funded grant or fellowship.