Guest Researchers

Dr. Jennifer Gouck
Dr. Jennifer Gouck
© Gouck

Dr. Jennifer Gouck (she/her) is a Women in Research (WiRe) Fellow. Her research focuses on representations of girlhood in contemporary American Young Adult literature, media, and culture, and she is also interested in censorship and the rise of book banning in the United States. Her project, “Exploring The ‘Abortion Road Trip’ in American Young Adult Fiction” investigates literary and cultural representations of teen pregnancy and abortion in contemporary American Young Adult (YA) texts, situating these representations within the rapidly changing, unstable, and increasingly conservative sociopolitical environment in America.

Jennifer holds a PhD from University College Dublin where she was a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar. Her doctoral research received awards from the Irish Association for American Studies and the Bassi Foundation. Jennifer is currently revising her thesis for publication as a monograph entitled The Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Contemporary American Young Adult Fiction and is also Guest Editor for a 2025 Special Section of The International Journal of Young Adult Literature entitled “Reflecting on ‘The Teen Whisperer’: Twenty Years of John Green.”

Jennifer’s work has appeared in The Irish Journal of American Studies, The International Journal of Young Adult Literature, Women’s Studies, and she has written a chapter for Children’s Literature and Culture: An Introduction, edited by Dr Rebecca Rowe (forthcoming with Routledge). Jennifer is also passionate about engaging with audiences beyond academia; she has been a reviewer for Children’s Books Ireland’s Inis Magazine and had a regular feature called “Beyond the Books: Where a Love of YA Can Take You” in issues 2-6 of Paper Lanterns: The Teen and Young Adult Literary Journal.

Outside her research, Jennifer is an award-winning teacher, earning an Exceptional Contribution to Learning Award while at University College Dublin. During her time at Belfast Metropolitan College, Jennifer developed and lead the “Library Explorers” initiative. Informed by her experience as a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) practitioner, the Library Explorers programme aimed to increase the confidence of students aged 14-16 from Special Schools in Northern Ireland in engaging with library services. Additionally, the pilot project encouraged these students to read for pleasure and provided the tools to foster a culture of lifelong learning.

Jennifer currently sits on the Membership Committee for the Children’s Literature Association (2024-2027). She previously served as Secretary-Treasurer on the YA Studies Association’s inaugural Executive Board (2020-2024) and as Digital Co-Ordinator on the Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature’s Executive Committee (2021-2023).

  • Research Interests

    • Twenty-First Century American YA fiction
    • YA literature, media, and culture
    • Girlhood Studies
    • Censorship and book banning in the United States
    • Social Media
    • Genre, publishing categories, defining and ‘naming’ (e.g. Young Adult vs. New Adult; Romantasy)
Dr. Maria Elena Indelicato
Dr. Maria Elena Indelicato
© Indelicato

Dr. Maria Elena Indelicato (she, her, hers) is a CEEC FCT researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. She was recently awarded the first edition of the Wiley Research Hero Prize for her commitment to making academia more inclusive. She currently is a WiRE Fellow at the Department of English, University of Münster, to collaborate with Professor and Chair of American Studies Silvia Schultermandl and complete her work on the uses of sentimental politics of representation amongst early Black American feminists in the late nineteenth century. 

Indelicato is also associate editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies, co-editor of the section "Anti-Racism/Mobilisations and Resistance" of the forthcoming online Routledge Encyclopaedia of Race and Racism, and member of the FCT-funded research project "Unpacking POPulism: Comparing the Formation of Emotion Narratives and Their Effects on Political Behaviour (UNPOP)." She is a member of the American Studies Research Colloquium and co-convenor of the international Trans* Reading Group and The Circle: Critical Race New Research Seminar Series

Indelicato obtained her Ph.D. at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydey, where she also assisted historian Victoria Grieves with the ARC project "More than Family History: Race, Gender and the Aboriginal Family in Australian history." Following, she was appointed lecturer at the School of Communication, Ningbo Institute of Technology, Zhejiang University, where she also acted as international vice-director of the Huallywood Film Research Center. In 2018, Indelicato was awarded with the Endeavour Research Fellowship to undertake the project "Natives, Settlers, and Migrants: a Historical Study of Social Relations in Australia" and,  in 2020, she was awarded with the CEEC Individual FCT Research Grant to undertake the project "A Colonial History of Anti-Racism in Education: Anthropology, Race Displacement and Knowledge Transliteration."

Besides her monograph (2018), Australian New Migrants: International Students' History of Affective Encounters with the Border, she has published in feminist, critical race and cultural studies journals such as Outskirts: Feminisms along with the Edge, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies e-Journal, Chinese Cinemas, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Paedagogica Historica, Transnational Cinemas, Feminist Review, Postcolonial Studies, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of Intercultural Studies, and European Journal of Women Studies, besides several chapters in edited books on settler colonialism, Chinese cinemas, and international education.

  • Research Interests

    • Critical Race Studies
    • Feminist Theory
    • Queer Theory
    • Affect Theory
    • Anti-Blackness
    • Anti-racism Education
    • Settler Colonial Studies