President
Dr Jeremy Johnston is an Assistant Professor (Limited Duties) in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He conducts interdisciplinary research at the junction of Children’s and YA Literature, Economic Humanities, and Gender Studies, examining how neoliberal capitalism informs literary adolescence in particularly in gendered ways. His forthcoming monograph Productive Citizenship: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Young Adult Novel is set for publication with the University Press of Mississippi. Productive Citizenship argues that the shifting economic conditions within the U.S. since the mid-twentieth century – for instance, the development of neoliberal policies through the 1970s and 1980s – correspond to the emergence and proliferation of YA fiction as a literary field, its prevalent themes, and narrative tropes. Jeremy is also a member of the Children’s Literature Association and, specifically, a co-chair of its Membership Committee.
Contact Jeremy at yasapresident@gmail.com or via Instagram/X (Twitter) @JeremyTLJ.
Vice President
Dr Susanne Abou Ghaida is a researcher specialising in Arabic children’s and adolescent literature. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Glasgow, and her doctoral research was on the Arabic adolescent novel and constructions of adolescence. She is currently a Civis-3i postdoctoral fellow at Aix-Marseille University in France and co-hosted by the University of Glasgow where she is carrying out research on Al-Shayaateen Al-13 [The 13 Devils], an Arab espionage series for adolescents published between 1974 and 2008. She has researched and written about a number of subjects, including oral history and memory; Arabic picture books; multicultural children’s literature; critical hope; disability; and sexuality in Arabic adolescent literature. She is an associate editor of the International Journal of Young Adult Literature (IJYAL).
Secretary-Treasurer
Position vacant.
Membership Manager
Tânia Cerqueira is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (Portugal). Her thesis, funded by National Funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology (2021.04547.BD), explores the relationship between the Gothic tradition and young adult dystopian literature. She holds a Master’s degree in Anglo-American Studies from the same university and obtained it with a dissertation titled ‘“Are you afraid of your own shadow?”: The Monster and the Construction of Identity in Monsters of Verity.’ She is a collaborator at the Centre for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS). Her main research interests include young adult fiction, dystopia, monstrosity, the Gothic, and posthumanism. After playing Stray, she developed a new research interest: cat representations in video games. Her cats approved of it.
Contact Tânia via Twitter: @mybookishsecret.
Social Media Coordinator
Cassandra Whisenant is a doctoral student at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Her PhD research centers around Latinx adolescence and how gender, sexuality, race, religion, and identity shape conceptions of a defined adolescence. Her masters’ dissertation addressed modern superheroes and identity politics, and became the basis for a comics and manga literature course she taught as an adjunct professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida.
A proud Latina from West Virginia, Cassandra earned a BS in Advertising and Public Relations from West Virginia University and an MRes in Children’s Literature from the University of Reading in Reading, England. Her academic interests include children’s and young adult literature, comics, adolescence, Latinx literature, multiculturalism, and identity studies. Besides literature and grass roots advocacy, Cassandra loves nothing more than a strong cup of black coffee and hiking around Appalachia.
Find her on Twitter @basic_boricua.
Website Coordinator
Dr Caylee Tierney is a university associate and research assistant at the University of Tasmania (Australia). She researches in the areas of popular fiction, publishing studies and children’s fiction. Her academic work on children’s fantasy is published in the Australian Humanities Review and Fafnir. Caylee also writes young adult fantasy fiction that explores themes of identity, truth and freedom. Her short fiction is published in Aurealis magazine and anthologies including Ms. Aligned 4, Lockdown Fantasy #5 and Sweet Treats: Cupcake.
Connect with her on Twitter: @CayleeTierney.