Karin Lesnik-Oberstein

Karin Lesnik-Oberstein is a Professor of Critical Theory in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK, and Director of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL) and its M(Res.) in Children's Literature http://www.circl.co.uk/circl.html. CIRCL is the only academic centre in the world teaching children's literature from a non-essentialist approach, and this has become known internationally as the 'Reading School' of children's literature criticism. Karin's publications include the monographs Children’s Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child, Oxford: Clarendon Press of the Oxford University Press, 1994 and On Having an Own Child: Reproductive Technologies and the Cultural Construction of Childhood, London: Karnac Books, 2008; several edited volumes on childhood, children's literature criticism and gender studies, including the only academic or popular book on women and body hair The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008 and paperback reprint 2011, and numerous chapters on childhood, gender, queer theory and science. Karin's research interests continue to be in transdisciplinary Critical Theory and at this time she is working on an edited volume on Rethinking Disability Practice and Theory: Challenging Essentialism, forthcoming from Palgrave in 2015.