Diana Cruz Velasquez
School of Education
St Andrew's Building, University of Glasgow, G3 6NH
Email: d.cruz-velasquez.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Research Interests:
- Reading promotion projects in Latinamerican Contexts
- Reading practices and Reading spaces
- Children's picturebooks
- Visual literacy
- Early childhood
Research title: Co-constructing strategies for enhancing democratic reading spaces in early childhood through image reading and dialogic exchanges: A case study in Yauyos, Peru
Research Summary
My PhD research is built on the findings of my MA case study dissertation (Cruz, 2022) which explored “Bibliomochilas” [itinerary library in a backpack], a reading promotion project that started in the Peruvian early education community of Yauyos and has expanded to Huaral since 2023. In my current research, I propose the concepts of "Democratic Reading Practices" to mediate "Democratic Reading spaces" using image reading and dialogic exchanges as an alternative path for embracing a reader's identity and developing the skills of a literary reader. The proposed path diverges from the conventional literacy practices rooted in a colonial educational tradition. The horizontal practices the project proposes aim to become a set of strategies co-constructed with teachers and parents for the project to endure and expand into other Peruvian provinces or Latin American contexts.
Supervisors
Grants
College of Social Sciences (CoSS) PhD Scholarship, 2023-2026
Int. Erasmus Mundus CLMC Scholarship, 2020-2022
50% Scholarship with Universidad Rafael Landívar, 2012-2018
Conference
IBBY 39th International Congress, Trieste Italy 2024
Additional Information
I started my trajectory within children’s literature as a freelance illustration artist and designer of children’s books. I have participated in editorial projects with AGLIJ (Asociación Guatemalteca de Literatura Infantil), Santillana editorial and several Guatemalan NGO's. I hold an Industrial Design undergraduate degree with Universidad Rafael Landívar and have actively participated in art collectives such as "Niñas Furia" and "Colectivo de Ilustración Científica de Guatemala". Following this I was granted an Erasmus Scholarship for undertaking the international master programme CLMC (Children’s Literature, Media and Culture) in 2020-2022. During the master’s degree, I studied the first semester at University of Glasgow, Scotland; the second semester at Aarhus University, Denmark; and finally, I chose the reading promotion path with Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona in my third semester. In this last semester, I did an internship with the Venezuelan editorial Ekaré, where I learned the "behind the scenes" of picturebooks, the art of images and texts itself.
