Projects
Growing up urban: Children's literature and the city in Dutch-speaking Belgium, 1900-1940. University of Antwerp
Narrative, Metaphor and Metamorphosis: The Environmental Potential of Contemporary Children’s Literature Ghent University
This project, where children’s literature studies, ecocriticism and cognitive criticism intersect, investigates on both the macro-level of narrative and the micro-level of style how children’s literature responds to the imaginative challenges brought on by the Anthropocene. Understanding the environmental potential of children’s literature contributes to a better understanding of the complex intergenerational challenges (i.e. climate change) ...
Research in the field of children's literature in the Low Countries. University of Antwerp
Making Sense(s) of Children in Literature on the US-Mexican border Ghent University
This project studies the role of the child from a sensorial perspective in a transnational corpus of contemporary US-Mexican border literature in order to question established conceptualizations of childhood. First, the sensorial experience of the child in a border context will be mapped, then the child’s sensorium will be approached from a narratological and stylistic focus in order to establish which image of childhood is represented.
Thinking about your thinking: A more fine-grained study of the role of metacognitive monitoring in children’s arithmetic learning KU Leuven
The Influence of Teacher-Student Relationship and Interaction on Primary School Children’s Working Memory: A Multi-Method Approach KU Leuven
Working memory (WM), one of the core executive function (EF) components, is the ability to temporarily hold and manipulate verbal and visuospatial information. WM is considered integral to planning, decision-making, reasoning, and problem-solving, making it crucial for children’s academic achievement and social functioning. In primary education, when foundational skills in reading comprehension and arithmetic are developing, the role of WM on ...
H0m3 is where Num3r4cy is! Parents’ contribution to their children’s basic numerical and mathematical skills KU Leuven
A growing body of literature has documented that home numeracy, defined as parent-child interactions with numerical content, is related to kindergarteners’ basic numerical and mathematical skills. However, several studies also reported a negative correlation or the absence of the relation between those two variables. The overarching goal of the this doctoral dissertation was to shed light on the concept of home numeracy and methods used to ...
Constructions of a new comics readership through children’s material culture: the rise of comics for very young readers in France and Belgium. Ghent University
Taking the Alain Van Passen comics magazine collection as its starting point, this project shows how comics for very young readers (less than 8 years of age, who are gradually acquiring reading skills) has been established, since 1925, as a growing category in comics publishing, coinciding with investments in children’s material culture, through the novelization, dramatization and animation of comics.