Calendar: PhD SPEF

The PhD SPEF Open Seminar Series present

Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, University of Wrocław

Coordinated by Prof. Marnie Campagnaro

About

This interactive PhD seminar explores interdisciplinary, arts‑based, and cross-sectoral methodologies for researching childhoods by using the project Seen and Heard: Young People’s Voices and Freedom of Expression as a case study. While this three‑year EU‑funded collaboration between the University of Malta, the University of Wrocław, Humboldt University in Berlin, and Amnesty International Poland focuses on the post-migrant societies in Malta, Germany, and Poland, it may also serve as a model for investigating and amplifying children’s rights, civic participation, and cultural agency in other geopolitical contexts. As has emerged through the intergenerational videomaking practice implemented across the three sites of the project, the child participants engaged both with injustices they experienced in their immediate lifeworlds and with global issues they wished to comment on (e.g. fast fashion). Presented side by side on the project’s website, these videos exemplify how children engage with cultural and political discourses and how their perspectives resonate with each other across geographic divides.  
Methodologically, the seminar will consider participatory research design, ethical complexities in work with young people, intergenerational and cross-sectoral collaborations, creative knowledge production, and epistemic diversity as routes for understanding childhood in culturally situated and globally interconnected ways. It will also highlight possibilities for engaged and activist research across disciplines as driven by the values of care and solidarity.

Short-Bio

Dr Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak is Associate Professor of Literature at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław. She has published on children’s culture, new materialism, and posthumanism. Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film (2021), which Justyna co-edited with Zoe Jacques, received the 2023 Edited Book Award from the International Research Society for Children’s Literature. She also co-edited (with Irena Barbara Kalla) Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind (2021) and Rulers of Literary Playgrounds: Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature (2021), (with Macarena García-González) Children’s Cultures after Childhood (2023), and (with Terri Dougthy and Janet Grafton) Children's Literatures, Cultures, and Pedagogies in the Anthropocene: Multidisciplinary Entanglements (2015). She was among others a Foundation for Polish Science grantee (2003 and 2004), a National Agency for Academic Exchange, Poland, grantee (2020), a Marie Skłodowska Research fellow at Anglia Ruskin University (2017/2018), a Fulbright visiting scholar at Rugers University (2013/2014). She was also the University of Wrocław coordinator for Erasmus Mundus International Master: Children's Literature, Media and Culture (2018-2025) and is the University of Wrocław academic lead in Seen and Heard: Young People's Voices and Freedom of Expression (2023-2026) and CoREM: Collective Remembrance: Engaging Youth Through Curatorial Practices (2025-2027).

Download PDF here

Seminar Registration here