Executive Committee

 

Mary Shine Thompson: President

Dr Mary Shine Thompson is College Research Coordinator and English Lecturer at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, a college of Dublin City University. She lectures on the SPCD MA in Children's Literature, and supervises doctoral students in children's literature.

She is a founder member of the ISSCL and its former secretary. She co-edited Studies in Children's Literature 1500-2000 (2004) and Treasure Islands: Studies in Children's Literature (2005), with Celia Keenan, and Divided Worlds: Studies in Children's Literature, with Valerie Coghlan (2007).

She is a member of the editorial review board of Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, and former editor and founder of Arista: Journal of the Irish Association of Teachers of Philosophy with Children.

Other publications include Selected Plays by Austin Clarke (2005), over thirty articles, the majority on children's culture, and over forty review essays. She has written biographical notes of authors and introductory notes to twenty children's classics (2006) in association with theIrish Independent newspaper.

She reviews regularly for Inis, and has also reviewed for the national press in Ireland.

 

Ciara Ni Bhroin: Vice-President

Ms Ciara Ní Bhroin

Ciara Ní Bhroin lectures in English in Coláiste Mhuire, MIE. She also contributes to the MA in Children's Literature in St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. Her background is in primary school teaching. She specialized in the teaching of literacy and in educational disadvantage in New York State University College at Oneonta and conducted research on the writing process of kindergarteners. Part of her course involved work placements in a diagnostic and remedial clinic, a head start pre-school centre and a detention centre for young offenders.

After a number of years teaching in a Dublin girls' primary school Ciara went on to study children's literature in St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. Her area of special interest is Irish children's literature. She is particularly interested in the history of Irish children's literature, ideology in Irish children's literature and the representation of the past in Irish children's fiction. She has published on the work of Maria Edgeworth, Lady Gregory, Eilís Dillon, Elizabeth O'Hara and on the young adult novels of Robert Cormier.

Ciara has been a member of the ISSCL since its foundation and she also serves on the committee of IBBY Ireland (the Irish branch of the International Board on Books for Young People).

 

Amanda Piesse: Secretary

Dr Amanda Piesse is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and a Senior Lecturer in English Literature there, supervising, teaching and researching both in early modern drama and in children's literature.

She is currently supervising in the areas of landscape in children's literature and nineteenth and twentieth-century children's Shakespeares, having recently seen two theses, one on twentieth-century Irish children's literature and film and the other on the child in Shakespeare, to completion.

Special interests include early Tudor education and the schoolboy drama of the sixteenth century, and twentieth-century Irish writing for children, especially the work of Eilis Dillon, John Quinn, Siobhan Parkinson and Mark O'Sullivan. At present she has a particular interest in representations of older people in children's books as part of the TILDA national longitudinal study in ageing. She has published on these and other related areas in Studies in Children's Literature 1500-2000 and Inis.

 

Keith O'Sullivan: Treasurer

Mr Keith O'Sullivan is Lecturer in English Language and Literature, and English Methods, at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin.

Before joining the staff at CICE, he taught English at primary (SEN) and post-primary level, at St. Joseph's Schools for Deaf Boys, Cabra, and at third level, at St. Patrick's College (Drumcondra), Dublin City University. During this time, he was also an Appeals Examiner for the Junior and Leaving Certificate examinations in English with the State Examinations Commission, and a Professional Placement Supervisor to trainee teachers of English on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at University College Dublin.

He is a member of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, a member of the Board of Directors of Children's Books Ireland, and Chairperson of the judging panel for the 2007 Children's Books Ireland/Bisto Book of the Year.

He has been a member of the judging panel for the Reading Association of Ireland Book of the Year Awards, and has reviewed children's literature for Inis, The Children's Books Ireland Magazine.

He is currently studying for a PhD degree at St. Patrick's College, under the supervision of Ms Celia Keenan. His research examines Romanticism in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and its challenge to the legitimacy of Children's Literature as a construct. He also lectures on the College's MA in Children's Literature programme.

 

Valerie Coghlan

Ms Valerie Coghlan is Librarian at The Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin. She lectures on children's literature and on school libraries at CICE, St Patrick's College (Drumcondra) Dublin City University, and University College Dublin.

She has co-edited two guides to Irish children's books with Celia Keenan - The Big Guide to Irish Children's Books (1996) and The Big Guide 2: Irish Children's Books (2000), and Divided Worlds: Studies in Children's Literature (2007) with Mary Shine Thompson - and has published articles in books and journals in Ireland and abroad.

She is a former review editor of Inis: the Children's Books Ireland magazine, and is co-editor of Bookbird: an international journal of children's literature.

She is currently President of the International Board on Books for Young People, Ireland.

 

Celia Keenan

Ms Celia Keenan is Director of the MA Programme in Children's Literature and Senior Lecturer in English at St Patrick's College (Drumcondra) Dublin City University.

She is a founder member of the ISSCL and has co-organised all of the society's conferences since 2003.

She was the Irish representative on Comenius, The European Picture Book Project, ESET, 2002-2004, and Chairperson of the judging panel for the Children's Books Ireland/Bisto Book of the Year Awards from 2000 to 2003.

Her principal research interests are Irish fiction for children, Irish historical fiction for children, the relationship between children's writings in Ireland in the English and Irish languages, and the relationships between Irish writing for children and those of other countries.

Her publications include The Big Guide to Irish Children's Books (1996) and The Big Guide 2: Irish Children's Books (2000), both co-edited with Valerie Coghlan, and Studies in Children's Literature 1500-2000, (2004) and Treasure Islands: Studies in ChildrenХs Literature (2005), both co-edited with Mary Shine Thompson.

She has also published numerous articles and reviews on children's literature in children's literature journals, magazines, newspapers and other scholarly publications, as well as giving conference papers, public lectures and keynote addresses on the subject.

 

Martina Seifert

Ms Martina Seifert graduated from the University of Leipzig in English, German, and German as a Foreign Language. She teaches German at Queen's University Belfast as a DAAD-Lecturer, while completing her PhD on images of Canada in German children's literature.

Her research interests include the translation of children's literatures, image studies, the animal story, Canadian children's literature, and contemporary Newfoundland literature.

She is the author of Rewriting Newfoundland Mythology: The Works of Tom Dawe (2000) and the co-author of Ent-Fernungen (2006), a study on interculturality in German children's literature that includes a chapter on translations from Ireland.