Vanessa Joosen is Associate Professor of English literature and Children’s Literature at the University of Antwerp. Her research interests include the construction of childhood, adulthood and old age in literature, postmodern fairy-tale rewritings, the international reception of fairy tales, genetic criticism of children’s books and digital approaches to children’s literature studies. She also co-supervises a doctoral project on STEM representations in children’s books, a doctoral project on hypermedia fiction for adolescents and one on Aidan Chambers’ writing process. Since 2018, she has organized the annual children’s literature summer school, which is attended by participants from various continents and disciplines: www.uantwerpen.be/en/summer-schools/childrens-literature/programme/content-description. In 2019, Vanessa Joosen set up the project “Constructing Age for Young Readers”, for which she received an ERC Starting Grant.

Photo: Vincent Jauniaux