Research team

Prof. Marina Balina – Isaac Funk Professor and Professor of Russian Studies Emerita at Illinois Wesleyan University. The focus of her scholarship is on historical and theoretical aspects of twentieth-century Russian children’s literature. She is editor and co-editor of eleven volumes, most recently on Hans Christian Andersen and Russia, University Press of Southern Denmark, 2020. Her collective monograph (with Serguei Oushakine) entitled The Pedagogy of Images: Teaching Communism to Children is coming out in the summer of 2021 from the University of Toronto Press. Balina is the recipient of national and international grants, among them National Endowment for Humanities, American Comparative Literature Association, The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Centre, and German Academic Exchange (DAAD). As a guest professor, she has taught at the University of Nottingham (UK), University of Salzburg (Austria), University of Hamburg (Germany), and the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
More: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/​
E-mail: mbalina@iwu.edu

Prof. Michal Ben-Horin –  Associate professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Bar-Ilan University (Israel); expert in the area of Modern German Literature, German-Jewish Literature, and Modern Hebrew Literature, Holocaust Studies, Aesthetic and Critical Theory.
More: https://comlit.biu.ac.il/en/faculty/321​
E-mail: michal.ben-horin@biu.ac.il​

Dr. Daniel Feldman – lecturer of English literature at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he specializes in Holocaust literature and children’s literature. His primary area of research is the portrayal of traumatic events in texts for young readers.
More information at https://english.biu.ac.il/faculty/feldman-daniel
E-mail: Daniel.Feldman@biu.ac.il

Dr. Erga Heller – Senior lecturer, Head of Literature Department Kaye Academic College of Education in Beer Sheva (Israel); expert in the area of Hebrew/Israeli Culture; Israeli Children’s culture and literature; WWII Fiction and Autobiographical Novels; Fantasy literature and culture; Hebrew Translation.
More: https://kaye.academia.edu/ErgaHeller, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8330-7782
E-mail: heller@kaye.ac.il​

Prof. Irena Barbara Kalla – Associate Professor, head of Dutch Studies, and coordinator of The Centre  for Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the Faculty of Letters, University of Wroclaw, Poland. She has published on Dutch and Flemish literature, including Huisbeelden in de moderne Nederlandstalige poëzie (2012) and Minoes, Minnie, Minu en andere katse streken (2017, with Jan Van Coillie), on interactions of literature and digital media culture On the Fringes of Literature and Digital Media Culture. Perspectives from Eastern and Western Europe (2018, with P. Poniatowska and D. Michułka), and on play and intergenerational relationships Rulers of Literary Playgrounds: Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature and Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind (2021, both with J. Deszcz-Tryhubczak). She is Chief Editor of the series Lage Landen Studies (Academia Press Ghent, Belgium).
More: http://www.cbldm.uni.wroc.pl/en/, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6032-9321
E-mail: barbara.kalla@uwr.edu.pl

Dr. Sylwia Karolak – Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish and Classical Philology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland); expert in the area of Polish Literature; Holocaust Literature; Women’s Literature. She has published books: Holocaust Experience in Polish Literature 1947-1991. Canon, which Did Not Come Into Being (2014) and The Polemic Over Aleksander Kaminski’s Kamienie na szaniec (2019). She co-edited books: The Traces of World War II and Holocaust in the Contemporary Polish Literature (2016), Baranczak’s America (2018), three-volume Centenary of Polish Philology in Poznan (1919-2019) (2019).
More: https://polonistyka.amu.edu.pl/ifp/ifp/struktura-instytutu/zakad-antropologii-literatury​
E-mail: skarolak@amu.edu.pl​

Prof. Roman Katsman – Full professor at the Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar-Ilan University (Israel); expert in the area of Modern Russian and Hebrew literature, literary theory.
More: https://hebrew-literature.biu.ac.il/en/node/645
E-mail: roman.katsman@biu.ac.il​

Prof. Vivian Liska – Full Professor of German Literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp (Belgium); Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Israel); leader of the International Research Team “21^st Century Comparative Holocaust Literature”.
More: https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/staff/vivian-liska/, https://en.german.huji.ac.il/people/vivian-liska
E-mail: vivian.liska@uantwerpen.be​

Dr. Sarah Gregg Minslow – Assistant Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at California State University Los Angeles. Her research focuses on war and genocide in children’s and YA literature, human rights education, and British Literature. Dr. Minslow is a member of the steering committee for the Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies at UNC Charlotte and of the Teaching Brief Editorial Board for the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Dr. Minslow earned her PhD in English Literature from the University of Newcastle (Australia) in 2010. She has published book chapters on child soldiers, teaching war and genocide, and The Diary of a Young Girl. She co-edited the book Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide? which will be published by Routledge in Fall 2021.
More: https://www.calstatela.edu/al/english, https://calstatela.academia.edu/SarahMinslow
E-mail: sminslo@calstatela.edu​

Dr. Pnina Rosenberg – is an art historian specializing in the art and legacy of the Holocaust, focusing on women artists' oeuvres and graphic novels during and after World War II as well as the Holocaust in films. She lectures on those subjects at the Technion (Haifa). For many years she served as the art curator at the Ghetto Fighters' House  Museum (Israel), during which she had curated vanguard exhibitions such as women artists during the Holocaust and visual art in French camps (WWII) accompanied by scholarly catalogues, as well first educational website "Learning the Holocaust through art". She has presented papers at national and international conferences, and published books and articles on women artists/gender during the Holocaust, visual art and graphic novels done by inmates and 2^nd & 3^rd generation artists, theatre in internment camps and the language of European Holocaust memorials. Dr. Rosenberg is a Fellow Holocaust Research, Bar Ilan University and the art editor of Prism: Journal for Holocaust Educators, Yeshiva University, NY.
E-mail: pninarose@gmail.com​

Dr. Shai Rudin – Senior Lecturer at Gordon College of Education in Haifa (Israel); expert in the area of Hebrew Literature, Children's Literature, Holocaust Literature, Women's Literature and Gender Studies.
More: https://www.gordon.ac.il/%D7%A9%D7%99-%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9F
E-mail: shairudin1@gmail.com​

Prof. Kris Van Heuckelom – Associate Professor of Polish Studies and Cultural Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium); expert in the area of late modern Polish culture, with a particular focus on comparative and transnational perspectives; co-initiator of the CoHLit-21 project and co-author of the application.
More: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/literatuurwetenschap/english/literary-theory-and-cultural-studies/staff/kris-van-heuckelom
E-mail: kris.vanheuckelom@kuleuven.be

Prof. Sławomir Jacek Żurek – Full Professor; Head of the Polish-Jewish Literature Studies Centre and director of the International Centre for Research of the History and Cultural Heritage of the Central and Eastern European Jews at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin; expert in the area of Polish-Jewish Literature, History of Polish Literature, Holocaust Literature Studies, Judaism, Christian-Jewish Dialogue; leader of the International Research Team “21^st Century Comparative Holocaust Literature”.
More: https://pracownik.kul.pl/slawomir.zurek/more
E-mail: zureks@kul.pl​