# Event Details

- **Event Name**: “Muddy Relations in Children’s Literature”, A Public Talk by Prof. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
- **Event Start and End Date**: Tue, 03 Feb, 2026 at 05:00 pm
- **Event Description**: “Where the Earth Gets Under the Fingernails: Muddy Relations in Children’s Literature” A Public Talk by Prof. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak (Wrocław)

Date: 5pm, 3 February
Venue: Faculty of Arts Library, University of Malta

Abstract:
Children’s engagements with mud – messy, tactile, and insistently lively – offer a compelling site for rethinking human–more than human relations in the Anthropocene. While mud is often framed in anthropocentric terms as either a hygienic nuisance or a developmental resource – with mud play offering pathways towards creativity, imagination, physical health, and skill building – recent research across new materialism, posthumanism, and the environmental humanities highlights its dynamic agency and its capacity to draw children into intimate material encounters with the world around them (Crinall & Somerville 2019; Mycock 2019; Cole & Somerville 2022). In this perspective, mud emerges not as inert matter but as a vibrant relational substance that entangles human and non-human worlds, inviting ecological sensitivities and imaginaries.

This talk examines representations of ‘mud-child-action’ (Cole & Somerville 2022), in selected children’s books to explore how such texts model encounters with mud as transformative more-than-human relations. I show how muddy encounters cultivate forms of attentiveness, care, and ecological attunement that challenge extractivist logic and foreground shared vulnerability and co-agency. By tracing these muddy entanglements, the talk demonstrates how children’s literature participates in broader hydrological and ecological reimaginings of the Anthropocene. Finally, it highlights the pedagogical and ethical potential of mud play as a site for fostering relational understanding between children and the more-than-human world – an understanding crucial for imagining liveable futures of the post-Anthropocene.

Bionote:
Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak works on children’s participation, the Anthropocene, and posthumanism. She is the author of Yes to Solidarity, No to Oppression: Radical Fantasy Fiction and Its Young Readers (2016). Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film (2021), which she co-edited with Zoe Jacques, was awarded the 2023 Edited Book Award from the IRSCL. She also co-edited, with Irena Barbara Kalla, Rulers of Literary Playgrounds: Politics of Intergenerational Play in Children’s Literature (2021) and Children’s Literature and Intergenerational Relationships: Encounters of the Playful Kind (2021), with Macarena García-González. In addition to Children’s Cultures after Childhood (2023), and, with Terri Doughty and Janet Grafton, Children’s Literature, Cultures and Pedagogies in the Anthropocene: Multidisciplinary Entanglements (2025). She is the University of Wrocław coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus International Master: Children’s Literature, Media, & Cultural Entrepreneurship (https://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/erasmusmundus/clmce/). Since 2023 she has been the University of Wrocław coordinator and academic lead in Seen and Heard: Young People’s Voices and Freedom of Expression (www.seenandheardproject.eu).
- **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/msida/muddy-relations-in-children’s-literature-a-public-talk-by-prof-justyna-deszcz-tryhubczak/200029516703455
- **Event Categories**: art, literary-art, contests, health-wellness, entertainment, kids, business
- **Interested Audience**: 
  - total_interested_count: 16

## Ticket Details

- **Ticket URL**: http://facebook.com/200029516703455?utm_source=AllEvents.in&utm_medium=event-discovery-platform&utm_campaign=msida-events

## Event venue details

- **city**: Msida
- **state**: MA
- **country**: Malta
- **location**: University of Malta
- **lat**: 35.902211579921
- **long**: 14.482700336188
- **full address**: University of Malta, Sir Temi Zammit Hall, University Ring Road, Msida, MSD, Malta

## Event Organizer details

- **affiliate_id**: 2
- **organizer**: English at UM (https://allevents.in/org/english-at-um/26922496)

## Event gallery

- **Alt text**: banner
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- **Alt text**: thumbnail
  - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events7/banners/be60f5df3f5e7dce1a0e7d6df25b3b148a13de69a27596830adc0d02e1120b70-rimg-w300-h300-dcffffff-gmir?v=1769389727

## FAQs

- **Q**: When is the event happening?
  - **A:** Tue, 03 Feb, 2026 at 05:00 pm
- **Q**: Where is the event happening?
  - **A:** University of Malta, Sir Temi Zammit Hall, University Ring Road, Msida, MSD, Malta
- **Q**: Who is organizing the event?
  - **A:** English at UM
- **Q**: What type of event is this?
  - **A:** art, literary-art, contests, health-wellness, entertainment, kids, business
- **Q**: Where can I find ticket details about “Muddy Relations in Children’s Literature”, A Public Talk by Prof. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak ?
  - **A:** You can find ticket details about this event on AllEvents.

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