Our People
Unit Directors
Nicola DalyCo-DirectorORCID Number: 0000-0003-3548-0043Nicola is an associate professor in children’s literature. With colleagues, she has developed two picturebook collections: The New Zealand Picturebook Collection and the New Zealand Pacific Picturebook Collection. She has a particular interest in representations of languages in multilingual picturebooks. | |
Janette Kelly-WareCo-DirectorORCID Number: 0000-0001-9671-7855Diversity and fairness were key issues in my doctoral research and since then I have continued to research, write and teach about issues of power and social justice using picturebooks with students and peers. Because picturebooks are carriers of culture and values, they have the power to either support or disrupt existing power structures in society. Introducing sensitive issues and challenging normative understandings in early childhood education (ECE) pedagogy are key areas of my ongoing work. |
Unit Members
Marilyn Blakeney-WilliamsNZ AffiliateORCID Number: 0000-0003-2097-2598Marilyn Blakeney-Williams is a recently retired lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato where she taught undergraduate and postgraduate students in literacy education and literacy/technology. For many years she also taught an online New Zealand children’s literature paper. She has a particular interest in the teaching and learning of literacy education, digital technology and children’s literature in primary classrooms. | |
Kate MorganNZ AffiliateKate has worked in early childhood education since 2015. She completed her Master of Education with thesis in 2020, focused on kaiako/teachers sharing counter-heteronormative picturebooks with tamariki/children in a local kindergarten. In 2022 Kate co-wrote an article for the Waikato Journal of Education based on her picturebook research {https://wje.org.nz/index.php/WJE/article/view/893} and followed this with a blog post for Ipu Kererū/the NZARE on the same topic. Kate is currently living the dream on a quarter acre section in the chilly 'Deep South' of Te Wai Pounamu with her partner, dog and chickens. | |
Nicholas (Nic) VanderschantzUnit MemberORCID Number: 0000-0002-7729-7936Nicholas Vanderschantz is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato investigating the design of user-centred solutions to information-seeking and use problems. He has investigated individual and collaborative use of pBooks, eBooks, picturebooks, libraries, mobile and desktop apps, and the Internet. Nic's research focuses on the presentation and visualisation of information using typography in single language and bilingual contexts. | |
Sonja ArndtInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0003-0778-1850Sonja Arndt is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests intersect philosophy of education, childhood studies, cross-cultural studies and early childhood education. Sonja is the co-editor of the book series Children: Global posthumanist perspectives and materialist theories and leads the Global Childhoods Seminar Series at MGSE. | |
Joyce BainbridgeInternational affiliateJoyce Bainbridge is a Professor Emerita at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her picture book research began in the late 1990s and has focussed on the role of Canadian picture books in diversity education and in the development of identity. Research grants enabled her to participate in cross-Canada team projects that explored pre-service teachers’ engagement with issues of diversity through their readings of Canadian picture books. | |
Penni CottonInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0002-0088-9984Dr Penni Cotton is Senior Research Fellow at NCRCL Roehampton University, London, where she is responsible for European research projects. She is also director of the first European picture book project which won the award of Innovative Reading Promotion in Europe in 1997. Her research areas cover: European children’s literature; International picturebook analysis and picturebooks in primary education. | |
Christine HélotInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0001-8486-1841Christine Hélot has been a professor of English and Sociolinguistics at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Strasbourg (France) since 1991. As a sociolinguist, her research focuses on language in education policies in France and in Europe, bi-multilingual education, intercultural education, language awareness, early childhood education, and children’s literature and multiliteracy. Dr Hélot has published widely in French and English. | |
Petros PanouInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0001-9265-9942Petros Panaou is Associate Professor at the University of Georgia, Department of Language and Literacy Education. His research interests focus on international children’s literature with an emphasis on picturebooks, the social imagination, and inter/multi-cultural education. He has coordinated relevant projects and published several scholarly articles, a book, and two translated academic volumes. | |
Raymonde SneddonInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0001-6140-404XRaymonde Sneddon was a teacher for 17 years in east London specialising in working with bilingual pupils, their families and communities and a teacher educator and Research Fellow at the University of East London. Raymonde’s research has been focused on bilingualism in the home, the school and the community. Both as a teacher and a researcher she has worked with children to explore how they can both learn to read in two languages using dual language picturebooks and become authors of their own bilingual texts. | |
Åse Marie OmmundsenInternational affiliateORCID Number: 0000-0001-5109-9766Åse Marie Ommundsen is Professor of Norwegian Literature in the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), and an adjunct Professor at Nord University, Norway. She holds a doctorate in Scandinavian literature from | |
Ahonuku Associate Professor Darryn JosephNZ affiliateDarryn Joseph (Ngāti Maniapoto, Rereahu) has taught in higher education since 1996. Associate Professor at Massey University, his interests encompass creative writing, andragogy, reo Māori teaching, and children's literature. He is an author who has won four literary awards and has served as a trustee on Storylines: Te Whare Waituhi Tamariki, NZ Read: Te Pou Muramura, and the editorial board of Massey University Press. |