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Blanka Grzegorczyk

Associate Teaching Professor

Qualifications

  • PhD in Literary Studies
  • MA in English Studies
  • BA in English Studies

Memberships/Professional Bodies

  • Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
  • British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies
  • International Research Society for Children’s Literature

Personal profile

Blanka works at the intersections of literature, the arts, creative writing, education, philosophy, and politics. She is especially interested in the politics of and creativities in writing for, by, and about the young, and in the legacies of colonialism, including postcolonial terror, together with global communities and childhoods, and experiences of migration, socio-political exclusion, and split belonging, as well as postcolonial intersectionality. She is the author of Discourses of Postcolonialism in Contemporary British Children’s Literature (2015), Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature (2020), and Postcolonial Intersectionality in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Reading Across Worlds (2026); she has also co-edited a special issue of International Research in Children’s Literature on Children’s Engagement with the Political Process (2021). One of her current research projects locates contemporary dark academia fiction against such writing traditions as the campus novel and the romance of the archive with regards to how it is inflected by genres like mystery, the Gothic, and romance; it reads the pedagogies of haunting in the dark academia novel of the 2020s as encouraging imaginings of possibility in connection to some of the most pressing issues of our time, including inequality, resistance, and survival. Blanka’s two ongoing research projects that are next in line for special attention focus on sustainability as an issue of imagination – and therefore of humanities – as well as of ethics and practices of cross-disciplinary care, and on reconceptualisation of thinking about good readers, writers, and critics in the contexts of literary critical education and prizing cultures. 

Blanka has been contributing to teaching at all levels within the Faculty since 2016. She taught courses in critical approaches to literature, creative writing, and the arts at various UK and overseas universities before taking up a permanent post in the Faculty in 2019.

Academic Area/Links

  • Arts and Creativities
  • Centre for Research in Children’s Literature

Postgraduate

  • MPhil (Arts Creativity and Education; Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature; Research Methods Strand)
  • PGCE-M MEd (Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature)
  • PhD Supervisor and Advisor

Undergraduate

  • Education, Creativity and Culture
  • Education, Literature and Postcolonial Cultures
  • Children's Literature

Prospective PhD Applications

Blanka welcomes applications from graduate students interested in working on any topics broadly relating to her research interests.

Research Topics

  • postcolonialism and intersectionality (including intersections of postcolonialism and ecocriticism, feminism, and posthumanism) 
  • literary and cultural theory 
  • twentieth-century and contemporary fiction 
  • colonial, postcolonial, and ‘wars around terror’ literatures 
  • writing place and space 
  • social and environmental justice and literature/arts education 
  • children’s and young adult literature and culture 
  • creativity, play, and child authorship 
  • global childhoods, conflict, and peacebuilding

Current Research Project(s)

  • The Dark Academia Novel of the 2020s: From Pedagogies of Haunting to Imaginings of Possibility
  • Humanities for Sustainability: Visions of the Future in Contemporary Postcolonial Environmental Literature
  • The Pursuits of Goodness in Literary Analysis and Awards: Reimagining the Empowerment of Young Writers, Critics, and Judges

Books/Collections

Grzegorczyk, B. (2026). Postcolonial Intersectionality in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Reading Across Worlds. New York: Routledge.

Grzegorczyk, B. & F. Mendlesohn. Eds. (2021). Children’s Engagement with the Political Process. Special issue of International Research in Children’s Literature, 14(1). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2020). Terror and Counter-Terror in Contemporary British Children’s Literature. New York: Routledge. 

Grzegorczyk, B. (2015). Discourses of Postcolonialism in Contemporary British Children’s Literature. New York: Routledge. 

Book Chapters/Articles

Grzegorczyk, B. ‘Postcoloniality and Globalisation.’ In The Cambridge History of Children’s Literature in English, eds. Eugene Giddens, Zoe Jaques, and Louise Joy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2026).

Grzegorczyk, B. (2026). ‘Childhood Rites and Rights in The Testaments.’ In Margaret Atwood: A New Companion, ed. Gina Wisker, Peter Lang, 107–117.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2023). ‘A Taste for the Secret: Tracing Secretive Families in Malorie Blackman’s Fiction.’ In Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, eds. Eleanor Spencer and Jade Dillon Craig, Routledge, 171–182.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2021). ‘ “Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall”: The Mediating Child and the Ethics of Cohabitation.’ In Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film, eds. Zoe Jaques and Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, University Press of Mississippi, 147–161.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2021). ‘Reading for Resilience: Postcolonial Aesthetics in the Post-9/11 British Children’s Novel.’ In Postcolonial Youth in Contemporary British Fiction, eds. Laura Lojo-Rodríguez, Jorge Sacido-Romero, and Noemí Pereira-Ares, Leiden: Brill, 238–252.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2020). ‘Girls, Boys, Bombs, Toys: Terror and Play in Contemporary Children’s Fiction.’ In Rulers of Literary Playgrounds: Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature, eds. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Barbara Kalla. New York: Routledge, 93–104. 

Grzegorczyk, B. (2018). ‘Radical Children, Radical Fictions: Terror and Extremism in Sam Mills’s Blackout and Malorie Blackman’s Noble Conflict.’ Neohelicon 45(2), 575–586. 

Grzegorczyk, B. (2018). ‘A Trojan Horse of a Different Colour: Counter-Terrorism and Islamophobia in Alan Gibbons’s An Act of Love and Anna Perera’s Guantanamo Boy.’ Critical Studies on Terrorism 11(1), 26–44. 

Grzegorczyk, B. (2013). ‘The Specter of Authenticity: Discourses of (Post)Colonialism in the African novels of Nancy Farmer.’ Academic Journal of Modern Philology 2,19–25.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2012). ‘Rewriting Colonial Histories in Contemporary British Writing for the Young: From Below and Above.’ Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 50(3), 34–46.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2011). ‘ “To Be Made Perfect”: Transformed World Orders in Gloria Whelan’s Fruitlands and Lois Lowry’s Giver Trilogy.’ Anglica Wratislaviensia 49, 29–36.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2010). ‘ “All I can be is who I am”: Representing Subjectivity in Terry Pratchett’s Nation.’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 35(2), 112–130.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2009). ‘At Home with Jane Austen: Imagining the Colonial Connection in Mansfield Park.’ Styles of Communication 1(1), 65–75.

Grzegorczyk, B. (2008). ‘ “Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure”: On Moral Imagination in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.’ Hither Shore 5, 93–105.

Public Writing

Grzegorczyk, B. ‘Love in the Time of Terror: From Dystopia to Demystification in Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses.’ The Conversation, 9 Oct. 2025, https://theconversation.com/malorie-blackmans-noughts-and-crosses-uses-critical-dystopia-to-challenge-us-to-build-a-better-future-253879.