MAJOR RESEARCH & PRACTICE CONFERENCE
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Please contact us at info@empathylab if you wish to be added to a waiting list and contact in the event of last-minute cancellations.
Join the University of Sussex and EmpathyLab, for this landmark conference focused on
embedding a model of empathy education to improve children’s wellbeing and reading for pleasure.
Hear cutting-edge new research about reading’s impact on children’s empathy
Explore practical new ways to build social and emotional skills through reading and stories
Help develop an agenda for change to drive forward a powerful reading-based empathy education
Our children face many challenges. As we all look ahead to the National Year of Reading, we invite policy makers, researchers and thought leaders from education, social and emotional learning, child development, and literature/reading to help shape this vital, growing empathy education movement.
Drawn from the worlds of social and emotional learning, child development, education, and literature, our line up of speakers will challenge and extend your thinking, as well as offering insightful, practical application of empathy education in action.
Author & former Children’s Laureate
Michael Rosen is one of the best-known, loved and award-winning figures in the children’s book world. From 2007-2009 he was Children’s Laureate. He is renowned for his work as a poet, performer, scriptwriter and broadcaster. He has written over 200 books for children and adults, including classics We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Hot Food, Nice! Michael is also Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he teaches on children’s literature, reading and writing. The late poetry critic Morag Styles described him as “one of the most significant figures in contemporary children’s poetry.” He is, she said, one of the first poets “to draw closely on his own childhood experiences … and to ‘tell it as it was’ in the ordinary language children actually use.”
University of Sussex
Professor Robin Banerjee is the University of Sussex’s inaugural Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global and Civic Engagement, and Professor of Developmental Psychology. Between 2019 and 2023 he was Head of the School of Psychology.His research focuses on the social and emotional development of young people, and he works closely with practitioners and policymakers in the areas of education and mental health. He founded the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness, an interdisciplinary research centre focused on illuminating the nature of kindness and its impacts on people and communities. In 2022 Professor Banerjee recently led the world’s largest ever public science project on kindness, The Kindness Test, in partnership with the BBC.
The Open University
Professor Teresa Cremin is a Professor of Education (Literacy) and Co-Director of the Literacy and Social Justice Centre at The Open University in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies. https://wels.open.ac.uk/research/lsj She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS), the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) and the English Association (EA). Additionally, she is a Trustee of the UK Literacy Association (UKLA), a Board member of the Reading Agency, a DfE expert on reading for pleasure, a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, and chair of the Advisory Group for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund for the Arts.
Author
Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy (Hachette), won the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award. Her subsequent novels have been much acclaimed and frequent visitors to prize lists including the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize 2021 and the YA Book Prize 2021. Needle (Barrington Stoke) was shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing 2023 and winner of the 2023 Little Rebels Award.Patrice was raised in an Italian-Trinidadian family in mid-Sussex, and now lives on the South Coast. Patrice Lawrence was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021.
The High School of Glasgow
Graham Fairweather is the Senior School Librarian at The High School of Glasgow in Scotland. Formerly a research scientist, he has been a school librarian since 2019 and serves as chair of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals School Library Group Scotland. He won the First Minister’s Reading Challenge Award for Reading Inspiration in 2022 and was shortlisted for Scotland’s Library and Information Professional of the Year in 2023. Graham was named in the prestigious CILIP 125 list of the next generation of library professionals. He is passionate about diversity in literature and the role reading plays in building empathy skills. He recently contributed a book chapter on empathy in libraries to the Facet publication “Radical School Librarianship: A Global Response” and is a judge for EmpathyLab’s annual Read for Empathy Collection.
NHS England & Author
Professor Anthony Kessel is a public health physician, GP and academic. Anthony is currently National Deputy Medical Director (Specialised Services) for NHS England,. Anthony is also Senior Public Health Advisor to the Football Association (FA), and advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on public health and health systems. Earlier in his career, Anthony was Director of Public Health and Medical Director at Camden Primary Care Trust (2004-2009). Across Anthony’s medical work, he has a passion for public health and for improving mental health and wellbeing in children and young adults. Anthony is also an author of fiction books for children. His current, award-winning ‘DON’T DOUBT THE RAINBOW’ adventure series for middle-grade children (publisher, Crown House) is centred on 13-year-old detective, Edie Marble.
Moorlands CofE Primary Academy
Jon is a teacher at one of EmpathyLab’s pioneer schools, with a passion for developing genuine reading cultures in schools.
He coordinates the Patron of Reading initiative, writes a regular blog and talks about books at every possible opportunity. In 2019 he won the Experienced Teacher Award in UKLA’s Reading for Pleasure Awards.
He writes a blog on building reading communities in schools and talks about books at every possible opportunity.
Author
A.M. DASSU is the internationally acclaimed author of Boy, Everywhere, Fight Back and Kicked Out, which have collectively been listed for over fifty five awards, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, The Week Junior Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Indie Book Awards, the Little Rebels Award for Radical Fiction, the American Library Association Notable Book List and Jane Addams Peace Book Award. Her latest book Wild Journey was published in October 2025. A. M. Dassu is a director at Inclusive Minds, which is an organisation for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity, equality and accessibility in children’s literature.
Author & illustrator
Jion Sheibani grew up in Brighton and now lives in Paris with her family. She is a self taught illustrator and studied English Literacture at Oxford University. One of her very first jobs was as an intern to Green Party MP Csaroline Luca in the European Parliament, and working on green issues definitely influence Jion’s first picture book Lily and the Polar bears. Jion was a teacher at Sciences Po and ENSAE before opening her own language school for children. Jion’s children’s book series The Worries are highly illustrated chapter books designed to help young readers understand, manage, and talk about their anxieties and mental health struggles in an accessible and humorous way.
PSHE Association
Jonathan Baggaley is Chief Executive of the PSHE Association, the national membership body and charity for personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, the school subject dedicated to preparing children and young people for life, and work. He has worked at a national level in education for many years, bringing particular expertise in educating young people about risks, harms and opportunities of online technologies. Jonathan led the Association’s successful efforts to improve PSHE education’s status on the curriculum, resulting in mandatory Relationships Sex and Health education in all schools.
Besides his CEO role, Jonathan is founder and editor of Fully Human – the PSHE Association’s research and development arm – which aims to better understand and negotiate the impact of technology on children’s lives. Prior to joining the PSHE Association, Jonathan was Head of Education at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (now part of the National Crime Agency) leading an education programme used with millions of children and young people every year.
University of Sussex
Jane Oakhill is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. She has worked on various research projects in cognitive psychology but has always maintained a research interest in children’s reading comprehension development and difficulties. She was awarded the British Psychological Society’s Spearman Medal for outstanding published work in the first decade of her career as a psychologist and, more recently, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Text and Discourse. Jane has published widely, including about 120 refereed journal articles and several book chapters and books (most recently, Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension, with Kate Cain and Carsten Elbro, 2015). She has received several impact awards for her research (from the Economic and Social Research Council and from the University of Sussex), to acknowledge the influence that her research findings have had on policy and practice outside of academia
Libraries Connected
Ed Jewell is President of Libraries Connected and Chief Librarian for Jersey Libraries. He has led Jersey’s library service since 2014 and has worked in libraries across the Channel Islands for 25 years. In 2020, Ed was given the Jersey Bailiff’s Award for services to the community during the pandemic. Ed is the first Libraries Connected President from outside England.
As President, Ed advocates for libraries as essential public services within wider policy and funding frameworks, contributing to national goals including literacy, lifelong learning, community wellbeing and digital transformation. A passionate believer in intellectual freedom, Ed emphasises the importance of libraries as open, inclusive spaces that reflect and serve their whole communities.
Kibworth Books
Kirsty has been part of the Kibworth Books team since 2019. A former secondary teacher with library experience too, she is incredibly passionate about children’s books and the power they hold within their pages. In her role as Children’s Book Specialist she has made the bookshop’s dedicated Children’s Room a haven for reading. She’s passionate about supporting schools in promoting reading for pleasure and is responsible for organising the events programme within the bookshop including story time sessions, author talks and publisher showcase evenings for teachers. Perhaps her proudest achievements are the charitable projects she’s lead, including a fundraiser to get books into the children’s wards at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, a partnership with the charity Baby Basics gifting board books to families, a Community Secret Santa supplying gifts for vulnerable and cared-for locals, and the bookshop’s ongoing ‘Pay It Forward Scheme’. A firm belief in the power and increasing need for an Empathy-rich world drives everything Kirsty does at Kibworth Books, a mission she hopes is reflected in the curation of stock to be found on the shelves and in the books recommended to children, families and schools. Kibworth Books was a shortlistee for Children’s Bookseller of the Year at the British Book Awards 2025 and Kirsty a shortlistee within the Individual Bookseller of the Year category. When not at the bookshop, Kirsty can be found reading, embroidering, wrangling her 3 young children or having her slippers chewed by a small cavapoo.
Walker Books
Shannon Cullen leads the creative team at Walker Books, a dedicated children’s publisher founded in 1978 and part of the global Walker Books Group. After moving to London from New Zealand, Shannon has over 25 years of publishing experience, including roles at HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and Quarto. She represents Walker at the Empathy Circle, the advisory group of children’s publishers for Empathy Day, and is Chair of the Independent Publishers Guild, also representing the IPG on the industry-wide EDI Forum committed to upholding the professional values of the book and publishing industry.
University of Sussex
Alan Garnham is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. He spent almost all of his academic career at Sussex, starting his doctoral studies there in 1977. He has taught widely in many areas of psychology and his primary research interest have been in language and in thinking and reasoning, both in adults. His work on these topics is set in the “mental models” framework. More recently he has worked on projects studying children, including one on the expression of gender in children’s voices and the current project, “Reading Feelings”, looking at reading and empathy in children.
University of Sussex
Dr Persefoni Tzanaki is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. She completed her PhD and master’s in Music Psychology at the University of Sheffield and holds a BEd in Primary Education from the University of Thessaly (Greece). Prior to her PhD, she worked as an occupational therapy assistant at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where she developed a piano-based intervention to support finger dexterity in children with hemiplegia. Her research sits at the intersection of psychology and the arts, examining how experiences such as music, reading, and synchronous interactions support children’s socio-emotional development.
You can download our programme to share with your network here:
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Please contact us at info@empathylab if you wish to be added to a waiting list and contact in the event of last-minute cancellations.
Refreshments throughout the day and lunch will be provided (you will be asked for dietary preferences when booking).
The venue is fully accessible. Please let us know of your needs when booking and we will ensure you are supported on the day.
The venue is within walking distance of Kings Cross, St. Pancras and Euston stations.
