Professor Evelyn Arizpe holds the Chair of Children’s Literature at the School of Education, University of Glasgow and is co-founder of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree programme, “Children’s Literature, Media and Culture”. She has taught and published widely both nationally and internationally and has co-authored, Children Reading Picturebooks: Interpreting visual texts (2003/2016) and Visual Journeys through Wordless Narratives (2014). She has also co-edited Children as Readers in Children’s Literature: The power of text and the importance of reading (2016) and Young people reading: Empirical research across international contexts (2018). Her current research involves children’s literature and the arts in projects on migration, conflict and peacebuilding. Evelyn is on the jury for the Hans C Andersen Award 2022.

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, is a professor in the German Department at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. She is co-editor of the book series “Children’s Literature, Culture and Cognition” (John Benjamins) and editorial board member of several international scholarly journals. She has edited The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2018) and co-edited Exploring Challenging Picturebooks in Education (2022). Her research interests focus on the history and theory of the picturebook, postwar German children’s literature and culture, canon processes in children’s literature, and the impact of the Avant-garde on children’s literature and children’s films.

Jörg Meibauer, is Professor emeritus of German Language and Linguistics at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany. His recent linguistic fields of research include lying, bullshitting, and insulting. Currently, he researches the visual culture of picturebooks from the German Democratic Republic, with a focus on architecture, design, and photography. He is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Lying (2019) and the co-editor of Pragmatikerwerb und Kinderliteratur (Pragmatic acquisition and children’s literature, 2021).

Petros Panaou is an associate professor at the University of Georgia, USA. Along with Janelle Mathis, Petros is the current editor of Bookbird. His scholarship focuses on diverse, multicultural, and global children’s literature. Petros chairs the annual Georgia Conference on Children’s Literature and was also chair of the scientific committee for the 36th IBBY Congress. He has served on several national and international boards and committees, including the USBBY board, the Outstanding International Books committee, and the Newbery Award committee. He has authored a book and several articles and book chapters on international children’s literature. He has translated two academic volumes and led multiple international grants. His debut novel for children and youth is coming out in 2022. His most recent publications include the following peer-reviewed articles and book chapters: Panaou, P. (2021). Engaging the Social Imagination in the College Classroom Through Radiant Readings of Global Picturebooks. Journal of Literary Education, 4, 154-173. https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/JLE/article/view/21027, Hajisoteriou, C., Panaou, P., & Angelides, P. (2021). Empowering children to speak up and act on social justice issues: The use of folktales and collaborative storytelling as tools of social imagination. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3765, Panaou, P., & Yannicopoulou, A. (2021). Ideology in Nonfiction Picturebooks: Verbal and Visual Strategies in Books About Sculptures. In N. Goga, S. I. Iversen, and A.-S. Teigland (Eds.), Panaou, P., & Tsilimeni, T. (2020). Translated Book Covers as Peritextual Thresholds: Comparing Covers of Greek Translations to Covers of Source Texts. In B. Sundmark (Ed.)