Organizing Committee

Academic Committee

Macarena García-González / Convener
 
Macarena García-González is a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice of the Catholic University of Chile. She has an MA in Cultural Studies from Maastricht University, and PhD in Cultural Studies and Social Anthropology from Zurich University. She has authored Origin Narratives. The Stories We Tell Children about Immigration and International Adoption (Routledge, 2017) and several articles and book chapters on children’s literature and culture. She leads a project on affective intensities and emotion in relation to literary and aesthetic repertoires for children. She is associate researcher at the transdisciplinary research network NDE “The Production of the Gender Norm” She is the Congress convener.

Andrea Casals / Organizing Committee

Andrea Casals holds a Master’s in Human Settlements and Environmental Studies and a Doctor’s degree in Literature, both from Universidad Católica de Chile, where she is a postdoctoral fellow researching on environmental awareness in Chilean picturebooks, teaches at the English Program and is coeditor of the journal English Studies in Latin America. Casals collaborates with Diplomado Literaturas del Mundo at Universidad de Chile, with a class on YA narrative, violence and environmental justice. She recently published Futuro esplendor: ecocrítica desde Chile, coauthored with Pablo Chiuminatto.

Soledad Véliz / Organizing Committee
 
Soledad Véliz is a Ph.D. candidate in education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a thesis on death and picturebooks that follows a posthumanist and new materialist conceptual framework. She has a background in psychology (undergraduate in Chile, Msc in Kings’ College of London) and an MA in Illustration (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge). She works at the Center for the Development of InclusionTechnologies (CEDETi UC) and the Center for Educational Justice (CJE).

Maili Ow González / Organizing Committee
 

Maili Ow González holds Ph.D. in Didactics of Languages and Literature from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education at the Catholic University of Chile, where she teaches children’s and youth literature to students enrolled in both, primary education and early childhood teacher training programs. Her research focuses on children’s literature, multimodality, and the treatment of the subject of death. Currently she is working on digital literacy in secondary schools.

Claudia Matus / Organizing Committee
 
Claudia Matus is an associate professor at the College of Education at the Universidad Católica de Chile. She leads the interdisciplinary research network to study the production of the gender norm in scientific research, educational institutions, and public spaces. She also leads the research group titled BioSocioCultural Inclusion in Education at the Center for Educational Justice. Her research interests include subjectivities and post-representational theories, space/time and movement theories, knowledge production, and critical policy studies.

.       Isabel Ibaceta / Organizing Committee
 

Isabel Ibaceta is a researcher at the Institute for Education Sciences, Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile. She holds a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature from the University of Roehampton and a PhD degree in Literature from Universidad de Chile. She is co-editor of Literatura para Infancia, Adolescencia y Juventud: Reflexiones desde los estudios literarios (Universitaria, 2016) and has published on canonical Chilean children’s novels by Marcela Paz and on national identity. She also participated in the creation of the Diploma Program in Children’s Literature at Universidad de Chile. Currently, she teaches literature to students of the secondary, primary and early childhood education training programs at Universidad de O’Higgins.

 

.       Felipe Munita / Organizing Committee
 

Felipe Munita holds a Ph.D. in Didactics of Language and Literature from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he was also a visiting professor between 2017 and 2020. Munita has been advisor and professor in international literacy mediator training programs. He is currently a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Education of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His research revolves around the figure of the literacy mediator, literary education, and poetry for young adults and children. He is also a member of the research group GRETEL.

 

.       Ja’nos Kovacs / Congress Coordinator
 

Ja’nos Kovacs holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Linguistics from our host university and a diploma in Archival Sciences from Universidad de Chile. He has worked as a literacy mediator in Fundación la Fuente’s network of libraries and is currently in charge of coordinating the upcoming IRSCL biennial.