Jennifer Rowsell

Adjunct Professor

Education, Faculty of

Fredericton

Jennifer.Rowsell@unb.ca



Education

  • Ph.D. in Literacy Education, King’s College London, University of London, London, UK (2001)
  • Master of Arts, University College London, University of London, UK (1994)
  • Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Rutgers University, USA (1993)
  • Honours Bachelor of Arts, University of Toronto, Victoria College, Canada (1992)

Key area(s) of interest/expertise

Literacy education, digital literacy, multimodality, AI literacies, makerspace pedagogies, postdigital research and theory, posthumanism, participatory methods, multiliteracies, creative methods, and ethnography

Classroom/practicum teaching summary

Since 2002, I have taught literacy education across programs from early childhood to adult literacy at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I started my career in teacher education and then taught across programs from undergraduate to doctoral studies.

I have supervised SSHRC and ESRC funded Postdoctoral Fellows and supervised over 30 PhD students. My teaching philosophy centers on being responsive with student-focused pedagogies that treats the classroom as an interactive, participatory space.

Professional and research mentoring

Over the years, I have led 13 funded research projects and mentored early career and mid-career researchers. Having served as a journal editor and book series editor for many years, I take pride and fulfillment from mentoring colleagues across career stages in their scholarly pursuits.

I am an active member of international networks and have significant experience designing and delivering workshops, keynotes, and hosting national and international conferences.

Professional practice, committees, volunteer work summary

Situating my work in the field of literacy studies, I have 25 years of experience as a researcher and academic in Canada, the United States, and England.

I have a sustained interest in the ways that people, from toddlers all the way to older generations, make meaning of and with print, digital, multimodal, GenAI and immersive texts by paying attention to the resources (material, semiotic, cultural) that they use, understand, and design with across informal and formal learning contexts.

At this stage in my career, I am focused on teaching, research, impact, and policy work that complicates notions of literacy and learning in the age of AI, screens, and platforms by attending to the ways in which literacy/cies are critical, disruptive, embodied, multimodal, performed, and enacted (on and off screens).

Scholarly information

ORCID: 0000-0002-9062-8859
Professor Emerita, University of Sheffield
European Literacy Research Network
Sustainable Futures