Dr Julie McAdam
- Lecturer in English Language (Culture, Literacies, Inclusion & Pedagogy)
telephone:
01413306888
email:
Julie.E.McAdam@glasgow.ac.uk
Room 684b, St Andrew's Building, Glasgow, G3 6NH
Research interests
Research interests
My research interests are clustered around children’s literature and literacies and I have a particular interest in the potential of understanding children’s literature as a safe space for inviting responses that enable readers/viewers to explore social and cultural dimensions of their communities. This includes exploring language practices, migration, identity and intercultural understandings.
I welcome enquiries from postgraduate students who have interested in exploring these dimensions in creative ways within their own communities.
As Programme Leader for the MEd and MSc in TESOL within the School of Education I am particularly interested in hearing from students who may have a TESOL dimension to their research.
I teach on the MEd in Children's Literature and Literacies on two reserach informed courses: Reframing Literacy for the 21st century and Texts for Diversity.
I am currently a Co-investigator on an AHRC-GCRF funded Network titled 'Children's Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring how story and arts-based practices create safe spaces for displaced children and young people'. In this project I have been working with academics and NGOs in Egypt to strengthen the capacity of third sector mediators to use arts-based practices when working with displaced in contexts of flux.
I worked as a PI on a Scottish Funding Council project to look at 'Children’s Literature and International Safe Spaces: Toolkit development for third sector partners working with displaced children’. This project stren‘gthened the capacity of third sector organisations to use and select literature that can be used as a mirror, reflecting the migration experiences of children and families; as a window on the world; and as a door to new ways of thinking and acting.
My current research interests were shaped through my involvement in the international project, Visual Journeys, funded by the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) and led by Evelyn Arizpe. This project investigated immigrant children's responses to wordless picturebooks and graphic novels and the ways in which they create meaning and narrative through their own multimodal texts. The book that resulted from this project was awarded the 'Edward B. Fry' Literacy Award from the Literacy Research Association in 2015. I also worked on the follow-up project funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation 'Journeys from Images to Words: Examining the efficacy of visual meaning-making strategies in the development of inclusive communities of critical readers'. The project was awarded The British Curriculum Foundation /BERA/ Routledge Prize 2013 for joint development work between schools and universities.
Grants
2018 PI on a Scottish Funding Council project to look at ‘Children’s Literature and International Safe Spaces: Toolkit development for third sector partners working with displaced children’. This project strengthened the capacity of third sector organisations to use and select literature that can be used as a mirror, reflecting the migration experiences of children and families; as a window on the world; and as a door to new ways of thinking and acting.
2017 PI on a University of Glasgow Funded project on ‘The Multimodal, Multilingual and Multicultural Potential of Picturebooks’ which examined children’s responses to Arabic picturebooks.
2014 PI on University of Glasgow Sustainable Development project ‘Narratives of Social Change: Supporting Sustainable Action through Creative Multiliteracies’. A two year project that supported teachers to use children’s literature to bring about social change within their communities.
Co-I
2018 European Social Innovation Fund ‘Challenging Discourses of Xenophobia through Arts and Story with Young People in Glasgow'. Working with an artist/illustrator to challenge and disrupt negative discourses surrounding difference.
2017 AHRC-GCRF Network Grant for ‘Children's Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring how story and arts-based practices create safe spaces for displaced children and young people'.
2016 GU Knowledge Exchange Grant for the scoping project 'Literacy Practices Past and Present' in the East End of Glasgow
2016 TEMPUS funded project ‘Foreign Languages for Professional Practices’. Developing language courses to accompany professional degrees in universities in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kyrgygistan.
2010: Esmée Fairbairn Foundation ‘New Approaches to Learning’ small grant for the project Journeys from Images to Words: Examining the efficacy of visual meaning-making strategies in the development of inclusive communities of critical readers’.
2009: UK Literacy Association small grant for main phase of the research project ‘Visual Journeys: Understanding immigrant children's response to visual images in picturebooks’.
Supervision
Supervision Areas include : Children's literacy development, Multicultural and International Children's Literature, the potential of children's literature to evoke human flourishing.
Completed
Emma McGilp: A Dialogic Journey into Exploring Multiliteracies in Translation for Children and a Researcher in International Picturebooks
Jennifer Farrar: "I didn't know they did books like this!" An inquiry into the literacy practices of young children and their parents using metafictive picturebooks
Ken Shirley - Teacher Knowledge and the Role of Theory in Practice in TESOL
Current Research Students
Soumi Dey: Emerging bilingual children and language acquisition: a cognitive approach to children making meaning from metafictional texts
Ahmed Abdullah: Investigating Iraqi Secondary School English Language Teachers' Pedagogical Practices
Susanne Abou Ghaida: Life’s Longing for Itself: Growing Up in the Arabic Young Adult Novel
Qian Yang: The relationship between Scotland’s Chinese young students’ cultural acculturation experience and their practice on bilingual learning. The voice from young Chinese bilingual learners
Madeleine Strobel: Reading Circles in ESL Classrooms
- Strobel, Madeleine
Reading circles in ESL classrooms