The article builds upon work carried out through a Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement (CLCCD) network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council–Global Challenges Research Fund. The network brought together academics as well as government and non-governmental organisations with expertise in children’s literature, migration, and education who were actively working in Egypt and Mexico. They collaboratively designed workshops that examined the use of children’s literature as a cultural tool for post-crisis interventions that could contribute to creating a safe space for children and their families to reimagine and restore their self and group identities. This article begins by unravelling the concept of hope, arguing for a critical understanding of hope for transformative use within contexts of flux. Using a critical content analysis approach, five picturebooks used by Egyptian and Mexican mediators were analysed in order to develop an understanding of how critical hope developed within the texts. The emerging themes have been expanded into a set of guiding questions that will enable mediators and educators to use children’s literature in contexts of displacement or precarity.

Universities play a critical role in the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals through the third mission, i.e. public engagement activities. However, female academics miss opportunities to be part of this mission because they are caught in many roles that prevent them from getting involved in the SDGs. In light of SDG5, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, we conducted interviews with twenty female academics from Iran and the Philippines to investigate their aspirations, opportunities and experiences with public engagement activities. Our findings show that, while recent gender policies have enabled female academics to develop robust careers, their contributions beyond the walls of the university remain limited because of longstanding patriarchal structures, distrust in women’s professional expertise and unchanged systemic constraints. By bringing women’s engagement activities forward and supporting them in the delivery of the SDGs, we reframe current debates on women’s roles in academia. We argue that HE institutions may enhance their third mission and better achieve the targets of SDGs by valuing women’s work and facilitating their engagement activities that may lead to significant societal impact. We conclude our paper with a series of recommendations for policy and practice that support women’s journeys in academia.

While many language programmes put the responsibility of language learning in the hands of refugees, few have developed approaches where the responsibility of language rests on both sides: with the refugees and the host communities. Building on rhetorical, intercultural and translanguaging theories, I present a peer-education model to show how it facilitated the emergence of social connections in translanguaging spaces. Participants focused on doing language: planning and delivering collective actions in their communities. I conclude by reviewing some of the principles of the programme that enable collective actiondriven language response-ability as a process towards sociolinguistic integration.Nombreux programmes linguistiques confient aux réfugiés la responsabilité de l'apprentissage des langues et rares sont ceux qui ont développé des approches où la responsabilité de la langue repose des deux côtés: avec les réfugiés et les communautés d'accueil. Avec le support des theories rhétoriques, inter culturelles et de translanguaging, je présente un modèle d'éducation afin de montrer comment faciliter l'émergence de nouvelles connexions sociales dans des espaces de translanguaging. Les participants se sont moins concentrés sur l'apprentissage des langues seules et se sont lancés dans la production des langues: la planification et la réalisation d'actions collectives dans leurs communautés. Je conclus en proposant principes du programme qui facilitent la capacité de réponse fondée sur l'action collective en tant que processus d'intégration socio-linguistique.

Recent natural disasters have challenged current models of crisis management and intervention, demanding speedy, flexible and emergent social actors to respond at multiple levels. To provide a comprehensive response, top-down models have incorporated the critical role played by citizen-volunteers in assisting communities in distress. However, few post-crisis response models have identified new social actors who can contribute with creative, coordinated, and sustainable solutions. In this article, we present the case study of the 2017 Mexican earthquakes and the post-disaster activities developed by an emergent group of social actors — reading mediators. We argue for the critical role of mediators and their use of children's literature and arts-based practices as essential instruments for community reconstruction. Drawing upon a case study methodology, we share the mediators' post-disaster activities and experiences in four stages: immediate recovery, stabilisation, development and consolidation. We argue that such cultural interventions are essential in assisting communities recover and build resilience and, more importantly, new social actors such as reading mediators need further formal and institutional support. In this sense, el Protocolo , the cultural protocol developed in response to the mediators' work, stands as an exemplary model that complements the emergent and distributed actions of reading mediators. As a whole, the Mexican cultural response provides a unique comprehensive approach that could be modeled in other contexts to address the needs of all citizens in vulnerable post-disaster circumstances.

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