Committee

Marian is a Senior Executive Librarian in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Libraries with responsibility for Bibliographic Services, Reader Development and Outreach. Whilst working at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1991-98, she spent several years cataloguing the Renier Collection of Historic and Contemporary Children’s Books. A regular reviewer of children’s books, she co-edited Inis magazine from 2009-2010 and was Secretary of IBBY Ireland from 2007-2010. Marian completed her PhD in 2010 under the supervision of Dr. Mary Shine Thompson in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. Her research interests include the illustrated works and children’s books published by Anna Maria Hall (1800-81), nineteenth century book illustration and publishing history, didactic publications for children and word and image studies.

 

ISSCL Vice-President: Dr Patricia Kennon

Patricia is a Lecturer in English Literature and the Coordinator of the Programme for Lifelong Learning at Froebel College of Education, County Dublin. She is the editor of Inis: The Children’s Books Magazine, the secretary of the Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature and the President of iBbY Ireland, an organization dedicated to promoting intercultural dialogue through children’s literature. She recently won a 2010 National Award for Excellence in Teaching from the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning. Her research interests include young-adult science fiction, gender in children’s literature and popular culture, visual culture and Victorian literature.

Dr Áine McGillicuddy

Áine is a Lecturer in German Studies in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. Research interests include Image Studies and European regional identity in children’s literature. She teaches children’s literature on courses both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is a member of the International Research Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (IRSCL) and is Vice President of iBbY Ireland, the national section of the International Board on Books for Young People, an organisation which seeks to promote intercultural understanding through the sharing of expertise on children’s and young adults’ literature both at national and international level.

Dr Nora Maguire

Nora has recently completed a PhD at the Department of Germanic Studies, SLLCS, Trinity College Dublin. Her thesis examines constructions and tropes of childhood in post-reunification German historical fiction for adults. Her wider research interests include childhood in literature and culture, nationalism and cultural memory, translation and comparative studies, and of course children’s literature. She has taught and presented on children’s literature and the Holocaust, and is continuing to research in this area. She currently teaches at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Dr Anne Markey

Anne teaches in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses on the intersections between Gaelic traditions and Irish writing in English from the seventeenth century to the present day, and on the representation of childhood in a variety of texts. She has published widely on topics relating to both these areas. Recent publications include an annotated edition of Patrick Pearse: Short Stories (2009) and she has co-edited the anonymously authored Vertue Rewarded (1693) and Sarah Butler’s Irish Tales (1716), both published by Four Courts Press in 2010.

Ciara Ní Bhroin

Ciara is a founder member and former president of the ISSCL. She lectures in English Literature in Coláiste Mhuire, Marino Institute of Education. She is coordinator of a creative writing elective course for undergraduate and postgraduate students and of the MIE Poetry Ireland Writer in Residence Programme. Ciara’s background is in primary school teaching. Her areas of special interest are the history of Irish children’s literature, identity and ideology in Irish children’s literature, Irish mythology and the representation of the past in Irish children’s fiction. She has published on the work of Maria Edgeworth, Lady Gregory, Standish O’Grady, Eilís Dillon, Elizabeth O’Hara and on the young adult novels of Robert Cormier. She is currently co-editing a collection of essays entitled What do we Tell the Children? Ciara serves on the committee of IBBY Ireland (the Irish branch of the International Board on Books for Young People). She is a regular reviewer for Inis and has reviewed for The Irish Literary Supplement and Bookbird.

Dr Beth Rodgers

Beth is a Teaching Assistant in the School of English at Queen’s University Belfast, where she recently completed her PhD.  Her thesis, entitled “Daughters of Today: Adolescent Girlhood and Literary Culture, 1880-1906,” investigated representations of female adolescence in late-nineteenth-century British and Irish culture.  She has published articles on late-Victorian girls’ school stories and the representation of Queen Victoria in juvenile periodicals.  Her research interests include the Irish children’s writer L.T. Meade, Victorian periodical culture, the history of reading, and the New Woman writing of the 1890s.

ISSCL Treasurer: Dr Julie Anne Stevens

Julie Anne is Director of the Masters Programme in Children’s Literature in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (Dublin City University). She lectures on nineteenth and twentieth century Irish writing, the short story, children’s literature and fantasy. Her research interests centre on Anglo-Irish literature and the visual arts; women’s writing; the short story; landscape study and ecocriticism; children’s literature. In 2007, she published a book on Irish writing and illustration called The Irish Scene in Somerville and Ross. In 2010, she published a collection of essays on the ghost story, The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, which she co-edited and introduced. She has published essays and articles on a range of topics including children’s literature, and she contributes regularly to both Irish and international meetings in Irish studies and in children’s literature. She has been a plenary speaker at a number of conferences as well as an invited lecturer in various institutions including the National Gallery of Ireland.