Research Focus Group Talk: Dual Language Picturebooks in Aotearoa: Contributions to Language Revitalisation and Critical Language Awareness

As part of a new lecture series, Children’s Literature, Cultural Preservation, and Language Revitalization, the Global Childhood Media Research Focus Group invites you to a talk by Prof. Nicola Daly entitled “Dual Language Picturebooks in Aotearoa: Contributions to Language Revitalisation and Critical Language Awareness.”

In this talk, Prof. Nicola Daly will traverse a range of research studies exploring the contribution of dual language picturebooks to language revitalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on her new book, Language, Identity and Diversity in Picturebooks: An Aotearoa New Zealand Perspective (Routledge, 2025), she will present findings showing how dual language picturebooks in Aotearoa can both reflect and disrupt language hierarchies, and how they can be used in educational settings from preschool to university to support critical language awareness and language learning of the Indigenous language te reo Māori.

Nicola Daly is a sociolinguist and Associate Professor in the Division of Education, University of Waikato, where she teaches children’s literature and leads the Postgraduate Certificate in Children’s and Young Adult Literature. She also co-directs the Waikato Picturebook Research Unit. Her research focus is multilingual picturebooks and their role in perpetuating and challenging language attitudes. She was a Fulbright New Zealand Scholar at the University of Arizona, USA in 2019-2020. She is an Executive Board Member and Treasurer of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL).

Zoom attendance link here

Cosponsored by the IHC’s Global Childhood Media Research Focus Group, the Children’s Literature, Cultural Preservation, and Language Revitalization Lecture Series, and the Department of Linguistics