Event

The Child and The Book Conference 2025

The Child and The Book Conference will take place in MindLabs in 2025.

Sonali Kulkarni

Event date

23/04/2025 - 09:00 until 25/04/2025 - 18:00

Published date

20/02/2025 - 11:17

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

4 minutes

Since its inaugural edition held at Roehampton University in 2004, The Child and the Book Conference has become an important scholarly gathering for students and researchers of children's and young adult literature. Following successful editions across universities in Europe and North America, The Child and the Book Conference 2025 (CBC25) will be hosted by Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

Children Shaping The(ir) World: Between the Exceptional and the Everyday

In recent years, exceptional children from all over the world have made it into our news media. Young people like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Thandiwe Abdullah, and Bana Alabed have captured our attention because they manage to perform eloquent speeches to crowds, inspire and mobilise huge protest marches, and address violations that had remained hidden. Adults mostly celebrate these young people’s extraordinary achievements. In children’s literature studies, their prominence has inspired several discussions about the possibility of political childhoods.

However, by basing our understanding of childhood on the examples of these extraordinary children, we run the risk of making it a limited – even exclusionary – concept. By way of alternative, we propose to explore the politics of childhood from the vantagepoint of not just the exceptional but of the everyday as well. Children Shaping The(ir) World: Between the Exceptional and the Everyday invites its participants to consider if we can only recognise power in children who stand out from the crowd or if there is a political dimension to children’s daily lives that we have yet to recognise. Further investigations may address the nature of the power of children who do not necessarily change society at large but do shape the world immediately surrounding them, impacting not just their own lives, but also the life of family members or friends on a more intimate scale.

We aim to explore children’s impact on the(ir) world in a broader context, ranging from the exceptional to the everyday. We invite discussions on what a quotidian citizenship for children can look like and how that relates to the impressive achievements of extraordinary children featured on the news. We propose to examine what effect celebrations of exceptionalism and concomitant individualism have on constructions of childhood and readers’ agency. Other possible questions include: What is the impact of celebrations of exceptionalism that are one-dimensional and hyperbolically positive? How do everyday actions of children shape society and/or the world around them? What forms of heroism or exceptionalism bears the everyday? We encourage participants to be wary of exceptionalist narratives that eschew systemic forms of marginalisation and oppression and to be aware of the limited extent to which they may resonate with young audiences.

Call for papers

Click here for call for papers. We are no longer accepting proposals. Acceptance notifications have been sent out.

Programme

The detailed programme can be found here.

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Yasmine Motawy, American University in Cairo - The Rhetorical Child in a Post-Global World
Dr. Louise Couceiro, University of Oxford - Rethinking the Exceptional: Is it Time for a Radical Reimagining in Children’s Nonfiction?
Edward van de Vendel interviewed by Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer

Registration

We are now accepting registrations for the conference from speakers and other attendees. Please register here by Friday, 21 March 2025.

Costs associated with participation are as follows:

On-site participation, standard: €130

On-site participation, reduced fee for graduate, post-graduate and PhD students: €60

Online participation: €35

On-site participation fees include lunch and coffee on all three days.

We have also planned a conference dinner on April 24 and a post-conference activity on April 26. Please note that both these activities are optional and have additional costs associated with them.

The conference dinner is organised at Ristobar 29, with a three-course meal and three drinks for €54.

For the post-conference activity, we will go to Efteling. The Efteling is one of the most famous theme parks in Europe. Each year, more than 5 million people visit this magical place. Fairy tales play an important role in the Efteling, especially in the Fairytale Forest. This forest is brimming with fairy tales, brought to life through charming little houses and animatronics. Of course, there is a lot more to explore in the Efteling. You can find dark rides, dive coasters and other shows and attractions! This activity will cost €65 including entry, transport and an audio guide made by our own students!