Fellowship Program 2022 (Part 1)

It was quiet around our fellows for a long time, but now the reading room is slowly filling up again. Before we hit off the busy summer season, we look back at the first half of the year and four of our amazing fellows.

Guilherme Magri da Rocha (Brazil)

Our first and only fellow for a long time in 2022 was Guilherme from Brazil. From January until March the student of the Sao Paulo State University has been a guest here at the International Youth Library to research and work on his doctoral thesis on the relationship between modernism and children’s literature.
For this purpose, he is studying English-language authors such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner and the extent to which they are part of children’s and youth literature. During his research, Guilherme asked questions such as “How do these authors participate in children’s literature?” and “How are their biographies told to children?”.
The Brazilian loves the coziness of Munich and the amount of parks and museums that you can find here. Moreover he appreciates the big amount of books you can find at the library. Let’s hope Guilherme will be back in no time to experience all of that again!

Svetlana Kalezić-Radonjić (Montenegro)

Svetlana from Montenegro spent four weeks (April-May) at the IYL. The mother of three children works as an assistant professor at the University of Montenegro at four different departments and teaches in the area of children’s and youth literature.
Svetlanas interest in children’s literature began during her master studies when she decided to write about Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, a famous Croatian children’s author.
Here with us, she researched on nonsense literature with the aim of filling the gaps about this really interesting topic in the former Yugoslav area. This represents also a part of her future goals, which is to present ex-Yugoslav children’s and youth literature to the world and vice versa. In other words: Contribute to cultural exchange. A large part of her work was the theoretical classification of nonsense literature, which she then substantiated with examples from Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.
Since this was Svetlanas second stay at the IYL we hope to welcome her back a third time to dive into the “heaven of all researchers of children’s literature” as she put it.

Carolina Jiménez (Chile)

„The construction of identity and the body of people with disabilities in children’s literature“ was the topic of Carolinas research during her stay in May and June at the International Youth Library. The mentioned project is also her dissertation that she writes for her degree in Literary Studies at Complutense di Madrid, Spain. Her focus is on historical books and fairytales.
In the past, she has done research on Arab culture and how it is portrayed in children’s books. In her free time, Carolina loves to dance and feels the connection between music, dance and traditional poetry and tales. In the future she hopes to continue and connect both of her interests.
Since Carolina feels like her time at the IYL is way too short to study all the books she needs, she plans on getting back here in November.

Cristina Sánchez (Mexico)

After being the head of the Children’s Magazines Area for Panini Mexico for a while, it is no surprise that Cristina chose a topic in the field of children’s literature for her master thesis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “In the Mirror of the eyes. Female Monstrosity in three contemporary picture books” is the subject she is researching on during her 3-months long stay at the IYL. In choosing her topic, she wants to carry out research on children’s literature with a feminist perspective. And since she’s very interested in monsters, it seemed like an interesting combination. In the future, Cristina would like to work as a children’s book editor in Mexico but still remain active in academic life through conferences and articles. Maybe if Cristina – sometime in the future – decides to get a PhD she’ll be back researching at the IYL?