Professor Karen Sands-O'Connor

I joined Sheffield in 2024 as a visiting professor in the school of education. An internationally-recognised expert on Black British children’s literature, I work with national organisations, including the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the British Library on issues of diversity. In 2022, I created the UK’s first major exhibition on children’s books and Black Britain, Listen to This Story!, which opened in Newcastle and is currently touring the UK. My publications include British Activist Authors Addressing Children of Colour (Bloomsbury 2022) and Diversity and Inclusion in Young Adult Fiction 1960-1980 (Cambridge Elements 2022), and I write a regular column for Books for Keeps and contribute to the CLPE’s Reflecting Realities reports.

Before arriving at Sheffield, I worked as a British Academy Global Professor of Children’s Literature; spent a year as Leverhulme Fellow working with the UK’s National Centre for Children’s Books, Seven Stories; and taught in the English department of Buffalo State College in New York, USA for more than twenty years.