The European Network of Picturebook Research Conferences

The European Network of Picturebook Research was established during the first picturebook conference in Barcelona in September 2007. The network was proposed by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen, Germany), who was a member of both the reading committee and co-organiser of the Barcelona conference, and of the core group of picturebook researchers, which includes or has included, Evelyn Arizpe (University of Glasgow, UK), Nina Christensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Teresa Colomer (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain), Elina Druker (University of Stockholme, Sweden), Maria Nikolajeva (Cambridge University, UK) and Cecilia Silva-Díaz (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain).

The aims of these conferences are:
1. To foster international picturebook research
2. To promote young researchers who are focusing on the investigation of picturebooks
3. To publish selected papers presented at the conferences through international publishers or in peer-reviewed journals.

Biennial conferences have been held in different European countries since 2007:

2007: University of Barcelona, Spain – New Impulses in Picturebook Research: Aesthetic and Cognitive Aspects of Picturebooks (organised by Teresa Colomer and Cecilia Silva-Díaz)
2009: University of Glasgow, UK – Beyond Borders: Art, Narrative and Culture in Picturebooks (organised by Evelyn Arizpe and Maureen Farrell)
2011: University of Tübingen, Germany – History and Theory of the Picturebook (organised by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer)
2013: University of Stockholm, Sweden – Picturebooks as Meeting Places: Text, Image, Ideology (organised by Elina Druker)
2015: University of Gdansk, Poland – Picturebooks, Democracy and Social Change (organised by Małgorzata Cackowska)
2017: University of Padova, Italy – Home and Lived-In Spaces in Picturebooks from the 1950s to the Present (organised by Marnie Campagnaro)
2019: Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), Bergen, Norway – Verbal and Visual Strategies in Nonfiction Picturebooks (organised by Nina Goga, Sarah Hoem Iversen and Anne-Stefi Teigland)
2021: Tel Aviv University, Israel – Picturebooks in Time (organised by Yael Darr)
2023: University of Osijek, Croatia – The Picturebook between Fiction and Reality (organised by the Croatian Association of Researchers in Children’s Literature)