- Assistant Professor
Dr. Spring is an Assistant Professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. She holds a BA (Honours) in English from Trent University and a B.Ed from Queen’s University. Erin was a classroom teacher in London, UK, before returning to graduate studies. She earned an MPhil and PhD from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Between 2014-2017 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Child and Youth Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Broadly speaking, Erin’s interdisciplinary research focuses on young people’s literacies, texts, and cultures.
Drawing on a range of methodological approaches, including reading discussion groups, photo-elicitation, and map-making, Erin’s research seeks to understand the ways in which young people make sense of their identities through reading, writing, and art. Her research projects are united thematically by a shared investment in stories and storytelling as a way of articulating identity development, with a particular focus on the influence of place. Her ongoing objective as a settler scholar is to collaborate with communities, including schools, to ask and answer questions that matter to them, facilitating social change, building capacity, and promoting student wellbeing.
Current Projects:
Doctor of Philosophy (Education)
University of Cambridge
Master of Philosophy (Education)
University of Cambridge
Bachelor of Education
Queen’s University
Bachelor of Arts in English
Trent University
Spring, E. (2017). Without Manifest, none of the book would have happened: place, identity, and the positioning of Canadian adolescent readers as literary critics.Children’s Literature in Education, 1-18.
Spring, E. (2016). Everyone here knows a Junior: Blackfoot children and their texts. Bookbird: an International Children’s Literature Journal, 51(1), 55-60.
Spring, E. (2016). The experiences of two migrant readers: freedom, restriction, and the navigation of adolescent space. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8(1), 227-247.
Spring, E. (2016). Where are you from?: locating the young adult self within and beyond the text. Children’s Geographies, 14(3), 356-371.
Spring, E. (2015). Place and identity in children’s and young adult fiction. In Nancy Worth, Claire Dwyer, & Tracy Skelton (Eds.), Geographies of Identities and Subjectivities, Volume 4 (429-450). Singapore: Springer.
Charlton, E., Cliff Hodges, G., Pointon. P., Nikolajeva, M., Spring. E., Taylor, L., & Wyse, D. (2014). My Place: exploring children’s place-related identities through reading and writing. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 42(2), 154-170.
*reprinted in Catling, S. (Ed.). (2015). Research and Debate in Primary Geography. London: Routledge.
Spring, E. (2013). Have people in Toronto seen what I’ve seen?: a comparative analysis of place, identity, and migration in the context of two Canadian picturebooks. Interjuli, 2(11), 27-38.
Spring, E. (2013). Insider/outsider relationships: considering the textual representation of regional and national identity”. In Ase Marie Ommundsen (Ed.), Looking Out and Looking In: National Identity in Picturebooks of the New Millennium (27-38). Oslo: Novus Forlag Press.