W ramach inicjatywy IDUB zaplanowano trzy wykłady:

Wykład pt. Captivated by the Text: Cognitively Challenging Picturebooks and Inclusive Education, o godz. 9.15 wygłosi prof. Åse Marie Ommundsen (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norwegia); Profesor zapraszający: dr hab. Mateusz Świetlicki, prof. UWr (Instytut Filologii Angielskiej, Wydział Neofilologii)

Bio po angielsku: 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.

Abstrakt po angielsku: Why do we read? How does a book entice or enlist us? How does a song surprise or seduce us?  What characterizes the aesthetic experiences of feeling captivated by works of art? How do you choose the right book that arouses interest, challenges cognitively, stimulates curiosity and promotes inclusive education? The lecture opens with a read aloud of a book that challenges the reader cognitively, stimulates the reader’s curiosity and engages the reader in an active meaning making process. The reader becomes co-author, actively constructing meaning from textual transactions across a range of modes – visual, spatial, and textual. The choice of books is decisive for the joy of reading for children, young adults and adults alike. In the lecture Ommundsen presents recent research on how picturebook projects with carefully selected, high-quality picturebooks carried out in schools foster inclusive learning communities in which all students can participate on equal terms. She discusses how the challenging picturebook communicates and how to include all students in the class in a shared, simultaneous aesthetic experience.

Wykład pt. It’s the Teacher, Not the Book: Rethinking the Role of Literature in Intercultural Education, o godz. 10.10 wygłosi prof. Xavier Mínguez-López (University of Valencia, Hiszpania); Profesor zapraszający: dr hab. Dorota Michułka, prof. UWr (Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Wydział Filologiczny)

Bio po angielsku: 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.

Abstrakt po angielsku: This intervention explores the role of teachers in fostering intercultural competence through multicultural picturebooks in primary education. Based on a pilot study in two Spanish schools with contrasting sociocultural contexts, 86 students aged 8–9 participated in guided readings and discussions of six multicultural picturebooks over three months. Using the Intercultural Competence Assessment for Primary Education (CIAP) alongside qualitative classroom analysis, the study found that reading multicultural books alone does not significantly improve intercultural competence.The findings reveal that teacher mediation is the decisive factor shaping students’ interpretations and attitudes toward diversity. In the homogeneous, upper-middle-class school, students viewed cultural difference as distant or even unsettling, reflecting the teacher’s color-blind and normative discourse. Conversely, in the multicultural school, the teacher’s inclusive approach—connecting stories to students’ lived experiences and national history—enabled genuine empathy and critical reflection. The study concludes that literature can only promote intercultural understanding when teachers are equipped to engage in open, reflective dialogue about diversity. Effective intercultural education thus requires not only diverse materials but also pedagogical training that empowers teachers to transform reading into meaningful intercultural encounters.

Wykład pt. Migrants, Nomads and Identity in Children’s Literature, o godz. 11.05 wygłosi prof. Georgia (Tzina) Kalogirou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Grecja); Profesor zapraszający: dr hab. Justyna Bajda, prof. UWr (Instytut Filologii Polskiej, Wydział Filologiczny)

Abstrakt po angielsku: This research explores the multifaceted representation of mobility, migration, and geographical displacement within contemporary children’s literature, arguing that these narratives are critical sites for negotiating young subjectivities in an increasingly globalized world. This strand of inquiry specifically examines the figures of the migrant and the nomad in fiction, analyzing how textual strategies are deployed to construct, contest, and destabilize notions of identity and belonging tied to fixed geographical locations. By analyzing narrative frameworks surrounding movement and rootlessness, this presentation demonstrates how children’s texts engage with the complexities of modern human movement and the fluid nature of selfhood. Ultimately, this work seeks to establish a renewed critical framework for analyzing how literature for young readers addresses the shifting relationship between self, text, and place.

Bio po angielsku: 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).

Organizatorzy: dr hab. Mateusz Świetlicki, prof. UWr; dr hab. Dorota Michułka, prof. UWr; dr hab. Justyna Bajda, prof. UWr