Professor Jean Webb

Jean Webb is Director of the International Forum for Research in Children’s Literature which provides a focus for literary, cultural and socio-historical scholarly enquiry into writing for children, internationally. She teaches a broad range of undergraduate modules on nineteenth and twentieth century literature, and is responsible for specialist modules in children’s literature. She is also co-ordinator for postgraduate research students within the Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts and is an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner.  

Jean has given conference papers and keynote lectures across the world: she is an Executive Board member of ChLA and the Children’s Literature Association, India, and is a member of the editorial boards of Children’s Literature in Education, the Journal of Children’s Literature Studies and the Journal of ChLa India. She is a contributor to the British Academy-funded research project ‘Reading Fictions: how representations of books and readers in children’s literature reflect perceptions of the power and purpose of literacy’.  

Jean’s publications include: (with Deborah Cogan Thacker) Introducing Children’s Literature: Romanticism to Postmodernism, London, Routledge, 2002; the edited collection “A Noble Unrest”: contemporary essays on the work of George MacDonald, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007; “A.A. Milne’s poetic world of childhood in ‘When We Were Very Young’ and ‘Now We Are Six’” in Louise Joy (ed) Poetry and Childhood Trentham, 2010; and ‘Learning and Teaching Literacy using Children’s Literature’ in Robyn Cox (ed) An Introduction to Primary English Teaching:  Language, Literacy and Learning, Sage 2010.