Anežka Kuzmičová’s keynote at UKLA International Conference 2025
Anežka Kuzmičová became the first speaker from a non-Anglophone country to deliver a keynote at the United Kingdom Literacy Association International Conference in the conference’s 60-year history.
In the last weekend of June, our Principal Investigator Anežka Kuzmičová delivered a keynote at the annual United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) International Conference in Liverpool, marking a historic first: in its six-decade history, Anežka is the first keynote speaker from a non-Anglophone country to take the stage. The conference, which has long brought together literacy researchers, educators, and practitioners, reached a new milestone in international participation this year. Out of approximately 300 delegates, a quarter came from outside the UK, making it the most globally diverse UKLA conference to date.
In her keynote, Anežka explored what it means to study children’s nonfiction reading experiences: how they differ from fiction and why they matter. She presented new, unpublished findings from an interview study with children in diverse socioeconomic settings across Czechia. She also gave the audience a preview of insights emerging from WONDRE’s recently completed focus groups, which engaged over 100 children across the country to explore how they imagine with nonfiction texts.
WONDRE’s presence at the conference extended beyond the keynote. Together with our colleague Markéta Supa, Anežka presented a paper as part of a symposium she convened on child-reader-centred research methods. Their session focused on techniques that give young participants ownership of the research process and foster deeper reflection. The symposium also featured contributions from Louise Couceiro (University of Oxford, UK), who introduced a creative reflexive toolkit for remote research with primary-aged children, and Chin Ee Loh (National Institute of Education, Singapore), who presented a mobile ethnography study with teenagers.
