About
PhD Research
How Do Picturebooks from European Borderlands (2015–2025) Function as Cultural Practices to Construct Critical Hope?
This research begins with an embodied moment: during an air raid alert in Kyiv in the summer of 2024, I observed a mother and her daughter seeking refuge in a picturebook inside a bookstore shelter on Independence Square. That encounter crystallised the central hypothesis of this study: in the European borderlands, picturebooks may have transcended their traditional pedagogical functions to become a cultural technology of hope, survival mechanisms that transform systemic uncertainty into micro-possibilities.
The research is anchored in fourteen nations across the European borderlands between 2015 and 2025, a decade shaped by the Crimea crisis, mass displacement, and full-scale war. To analyse how hope operates across this corpus, I developed the Four Ps Framework (Philosophy, Psychology, Pedagogy, and Politics), constructed from a systematic review of 918 interdisciplinary definitions. The study asks: how do picturebooks from this region employ multimodal narrative strategies to construct critical hope for child readers while honestly acknowledging the reality of trauma?
Education
Publications
Journal Articles & Book Chapters
Hasheminezhad-Li, C. (2026). Landscapes of Harm: Environmental Crime and the Passive Witness in Children's Graphic Narratives. Encyclopaideia, 30(74).
doi.org/10.60923/issn.1825-8670/23404Hasheminezhad-Li, C. (2026). Unheard Voices in the Dissonant Diaspora: Youth from Aggressor States Negotiating Identity Through Picturebooks. Lifelong Lifewide Learning, 24(48).
doi.org/10.19241/lll.v24i48.1098Hasheminezhad-Li, C. (2025). Post-apocalyptic Narratives for Climate Change Education. Climate Literacy in Education, 3(3).
doi.org/10.24926/cle.v3i3.7010Campagnaro, M. & Li, C. (2025). BIBI Puzzle Cards e Visual Frames: Visual Literacy e ricostruzioni biografiche in gioco. In M. Campagnaro & L. Ferrari (Eds.), BIBI Research Handbook: Biografie e Biofiction d'Infanzia (pp. 97–111).
Li, C. (2023). Reshaping the Balance: How Gilman Critiques and Constructs a Feminist Utopia in Herland. Nesir: Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi.
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7221215Conference Presentations
Am I a Voice or a Traitor? Dialogues with Youth from Aggressor States.
Seen and Heard International Conference, University of Malta Feb 2026
The Taste of Authoritarian: How Do Food Spaces Function as Sites of Control and Resistance in Picturebooks?
Eating Indoors and Outdoors in Children's Literature, Ca' Foscari University of Venice Nov 2025
The Potential of Post-Apocalyptic Young Adult Novels as a Vehicle for Youth Engagement in Ecological Transformation.
2025 IBBY Asia Pacific Regional Conference, Suwon Aug 2025
Projects
AARC PhD Initiative
Picturebooks as Democratic Memory: A Cross-National Study of Post-Socialist Children's Visual Narratives and Their Place in Education
Systematic survey and critical analysis of picturebooks produced in former Soviet member states following the democratic transitions of the 1990s, examining their role and influence in contemporary European democratic citizenship education.
P.A.G.E.S.
Picturebooks As Gateways to European Society
A series of interactive workshops at the University of Padova and the University of Wrocław, leveraging picturebooks as a shared language to foster cross-cultural dialogue on human rights, gender diversity, and war trauma.
BIBI
Biographies and Biofiction of Childhood
A national research and educational intervention programme investigating how the storied lives of diverse figures can offer young readers alternative role models, connecting visual narratives with gender pedagogy.