Biography
I hold a Personal Chair as Alfred Deakin Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, where I work in the field of literary studies. I have published 13 books and over 80 essays and journal articles on children's and other literature. My most recent book is The Middle Ages in Children's Literature (Palgrave), which explores how the Middle Ages are used and abused in medievalist texts for the young--that is, post-medieval texts which respond to and deploy medieval culture.
From 2007-2011 I served as President of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, the main international scholarly organisation in the field. In this role I met scholars from all over the world undertaking research in children's literature. In 2009 the Trudeau Foundation (Canada) named me as its first Visiting International Fellow, and during 2010 I spent most of the year working with Canadian scholars at the University of Winnipeg's Centre for Young People's Texts and Cultures. In 2011 I was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.
Read more on Clare's profileResearch interests
Children's literature: social, cultural and political aspects; postcolonial studies and literatures; utopian studies; medievalisms in texts and culture
Affiliations
Children's Literature Association
International Research Society for Children's Literature
Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research
Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand
Teaching interests
Children's literature, postcolonialism, medievalism
Professional activities
Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, elected 2011
Visiting International Fellow, Trudeau Foundation (Canada), from 2009
Director of the Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention, 2010-2014
Joint Editor of Book Series, Critical Approaches to Children's Literature (Palgrave UK)
President, International Research Society for Children's Literature (2007-2011)
Vice-President, International Research Society for Children's Literature (2005-2007)
Editor, Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature, from 1996
Member of Editorial Board, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures (University of Winnipeg, Canada)
Publication Committee, Children's Literature Association (USA) 2007-2010
Referee, Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press)
President, Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research, 1998-2002
Awards
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2011
Inaugural Visiting International Trudeau Fellowship, 2009-2011, Trudeau Foundation, Canada
Children's Literature Association Honor Book for Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature, 2009
Children's Literature Association Book Award for outstanding book on children's literature published in 2001 for Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature
International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) Award, for Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature, 2003
Publications
No publications found
Funded Projects at Deakin
Australian Competitive Grants
Building cultural citizenship: Multiculturalism and children's literature
Prof Clare Bradford, Dr Wenche Ommundsen
ARC - Discovery Projects
- 2008: $67,127
- 2007: $65,811
- 2006: $65,545
Literacy in the digital world of the twenty-first century: learning from computer games.
Prof Catherine Beavis, Prof Clare Bradford, Prof Joanne O'Mara, Dr Christopher Walsh
ARC Linkage - Projects Rnd 1
- 2010: $52,596
- 2008: $41,626
- 2007: $65,295
From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Print Cultures (1840-1940)
Dr Michelle Smith, Prof Clare Bradford, Dr Kristine Moruzi
ARC - Discovery Projects
- 2013: $58,752
Other Public Sector Funding
Developing Children's Literature Scholarship: Collaboration between Australia and India
Prof Clare Bradford
Aust India Council Grant - Research
- 2008: $5,000
Literacy in the digital world of the twenty-first century: learning from computer games.
Prof Catherine Beavis, Prof Clare Bradford, Prof Joanne O'Mara, Dr Christopher Walsh
ACMI -The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, DETVic Department of Education and Training Victoria
- 2010: $25,000
- 2008: $30,000
- 2007: $25,000
Australian and Indian (Tamil) Children's Literature: A comparative study
Prof Clare Bradford, Dr Meenakshi Hariharan, Prof C Indra
Aust India Council Grant - Research
- 2009: $4,500
Landscaping to Manufacturing: The Wool Industry in Geelong
Prof Clare Bradford, Prof Hisham Elkadi, A/Prof Dirk De Bruyn, Prof Andrea Witcomb, Prof Emily Potter
City of Greater Geelong - Creative Communities Grants
- 2013: $5,000
Industry and Other Funding
Researching and Writing The Wintringham Story
Dr Karen Le Rossignol, Prof Clare Bradford
ANZCT Grant - William Buckland (no longer relevant)
- 2009: $40,000
Supervisions
Robin Freeman
Thesis entitled: Ethical approaches to editing Indigenous writing in settler societies
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Catherine Sly
Thesis entitled: A Narratological Investigation of Australian Graphic Novels for Children
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Juliet O'Conor
Thesis entitled: Traditional Indigenous Australian Stories for Children
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Mercedeh Makoui
Thesis entitled: Gender Relations in Iranian Picture Books: The Politics of Womanhood
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Dirk De Bruyn
Thesis entitled: The Performance of Trauma in Moving Image Art
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Joanna Walkden Harris
Thesis entitled: Feminist Perspectives on Gender Ideology in Recent Young Adult Literature
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Kathryn Mary McInally
Thesis entitled: (Queer) Deleuzean Reading of Desire in Australian Young Adult Fiction
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Kathryn Anne James
Thesis entitled: Matilda's Last Dance: Death, Gender, Sexuality and Australian Adolescent Literature
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Diana Hodge
Thesis entitled: Victorianisms in Twentieth Century Young Adult Fiction
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Catherine Watkins
Thesis entitled: Celebrating Difference
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Carol Lesley Naylor
Thesis entitled: `Commonsense, Manners, Guts': `Manliness' in the English School Story 1887-1917
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Catherine Padmore
Thesis entitled: Leavings: A Novel and Exegesis
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Gaylene Perry
Thesis entitled: Water's Edge Writing
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Literary & Communication Studies
Lara Bridget Hedberg
Thesis entitled: Queer Girls, Queer Landscapes in Texts for Young People
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
William Anthony Kent
Thesis entitled: Here Be Dragons: Ideology and Socialisation in Young Adult Literature
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Caitlin Kavanagh-Ryan
Thesis entitled: Crip Worldbuilding: Representing Disability in Young Adult Speculative Fiction
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Dylan Gregory Holdsworth
Thesis entitled: Dis-topias: The Government of Disability in Dystopian Children's Literature
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Thomas Dylan Sandercock
Thesis entitled: Telling Trans: Reading Transgender Representation in Texts for Young People
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Rebecca Elizabeth Hutton
Thesis entitled: Homebirds: re-conceptualising music in young adult LGBTQ fiction
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Kathryn Hegarty
Thesis entitled: Crossing Bowen Street: Mapping Interventions in the Classed Subject
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Communication and Creative Arts
Darren Drake
Thesis entitled: Secularism Exhausted? Non-Indigenous Postcolonial Discourses and the Question of Aboriginal Religion
Master of Arts, School of Communication and Creative Arts