Doctoral workshop

The doctoral workshop will be held on the morning of 17 September at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. It aims to give early career researchers the opportunity to present and discuss their picturebook-related doctoral projects with renowned scholars working in the field of picturebook research. All topics within picturebook research are relevant.

The procedure for applications is as follows:
Submission information: Your submission should be prepared as a 1000-word abstract and a short biography in two separate Word documents. The abstract should give an overview about the main topic and argumentation of the study in progress and should be complemented by a selected bibliography (primary and secondary sources).

What to include: Your submission should include the following information:

a) Name of researcher
b) Affiliation as you would like it to appear in the programme
c) E-mail address
d) Title of proposal
e) 1000-word abstract
f) Areas of interest
g) Six keywords.

Where to send the submission: Your submission should be sent by email to picturebookresearch2025@gmail.com, with the subject line:
Doctoral workshop abstract submission.

Deadline: The deadline for proposals is 15 December 2024.

Peer review process: All submissions are blind reviewed, by the Organizers in cooperation with the members of the Reading Committee. Notification of the acceptance of proposals will be made by 15 March 2025.

Successful candidates: The invited participants of the workshop are requested to submit a paper of approx. 8-10 pages, including bibliographical references by 30 June 2025 to picturebookresearch2025@gmail.com with the subject line:
Doctoral workshop paper submission.

The paper should emphasize the rationale, the theoretical framework, and the main line of argument that form the basis of the doctoral study. Doctoral students are invited to present a chapter or part of their investigation. They may also present open questions and problems that they wish to discuss with the audience. These papers will be circulated amongst the supervising scholars and the other doctoral students to provide a basis for the discussion and participants of the workshop are invited to read these papers in advance. During the workshop a short summary of the main points will be presented by the author to allow for enough time to thoroughly discuss the arguments and topics of the papers in question. All abstracts and papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be written in English.

Doctoral Workshop schedule: The doctoral workshop will run in two parallel sessions. Each session will have four doctoral student presentations which are chaired by a senior reader who also responds to the paper.

Schedule (40 minutes for each doctoral presentation):

5 minutes Short presentation by doctoral student – it is possible to show a presentation with selected illustrations of the picturebooks used for the study
5 minutes Response by paired doctoral student (respondent) to the presentation and the paper previously submitted to the workshop participants.
5 minutes Response by the chair to the presentation
10 minutes: Response by the doctoral student to the questions and suggestions made by the respondent and chair.
15 minutes: Open discussion

Attendance to the workshop is free. The invited doctoral students are requested to apply for grants for travel expenses and accommodation at their respective universities.

Organizing Committee

Reading Committee

  • Evelyn Arizpe (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
  • Malgorzata Cackowska (University of Gdansk, Poland)
  • Marnie Campagnaro (University of Padova, Italy)
  • Elina Druker (University of Stockholm, Sweden)
  • Nina Goga (Western University of Applied Sciences, Norway)
  • Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen, Germany)
  • Smiljana Narančić Kovač (University of Zagreb, Croatia)