Senior Lecturer, Literacy, Faculty of Education, Monash University

Bio

Denise Chapman is a counternarrative storyteller, poet, critical autoethnographer, and academic who lectures in children’s literature and inclusive children’s media at Monash University. She has served as a literacy specialist for diverse communities in Australia, Fiji, Kenya, Singapore, UAE, and the USA. Denise is keen for teachers to see themselves as critical curators and creatives of media that support student belonging.

Her scholarly engagements centre around critical media literacy with a special focus on the impact of representation on imagination. She uses oral stories, children’s literature, poetry, and digital images as counternarrative windows for social change and liberation. Her counter-hegemonic creative work continues the traditions of her Gullah heritage and explores themes of home, immigration, belonging, epistemic injustice, teacher education, Black motherhood, as well as eco-racism.

In 2023, she was the Mem Fox Visiting Research Fellow and an invited speaker for AATE / ALEA’s national conference in 2023 and 2024. Denise was shortlisted for the Queensland Poetry’s 2022 XYZ Prize in Spoken Word Poetry and exhibited her poetry and interactive digital storytelling at Brisbane MetroArts (2022), the Counihan Gallery (2023), DotDot Studios (2024) and was invited to present at the upcoming Furious Flower Poetry Conference (Sept 2024).