Garcia Gonzalez, Macarena

Biography note

Macarena García-González is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Communication at Pompeu Fabra University, where she coordinates the JOVIS research group. She holds a degree in Journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, an MA in Cultural Studies from Maastricht University, and a PhD in Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies from the University of Zurich.
Her research lies at the intersection of literary studies, communication, critical childhood studies, and education, with a particular focus on reading, children’s and young adult literature, affect, and cultural practices in contexts of digitalization. She has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to develop OPENLIB, a project on literary reading, public libraries, young people, and inclusive democracies, which will begin in the second half of 2026. She also leads the COREM project (Collective Remembrance: Engaging Youth Through Curatorial Practices), funded by CERV-EU, which brings together four museums as well as research teams.
She is the author of The Borders of Empathy in Children’s Fiction (Routledge, 2025), Enseñando a sentir. Repertorios éticos en la ficción infantil (Metales Pesados, 2021), and Origin Narratives: The Stories We Tell Children about Immigration and International Adoption (Routledge, 2017). Together with Óscar Contardo, she co-authored La era ochentera. Tevé, pop y under en dictadura (Ediciones B, 2005; Planeta, 2015). She has also co-edited Children’s Cultures After Childhood, with Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (John Benjamins, 2023), and Campo en formación. Textos clave para la literatura infantil y juvenil, with Evelyn Arizpe and Andrea Casals (Metales Pesados, 2023).
She was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, where she is currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer. She has also been a faculty member at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a visiting professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, the University of Wroclaw in Poland, and the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She served as Vice President of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL), with which she continues to collaborate actively.