Dr Áine McGillicuddy (B.A., M.A., Ph.D) is Assistant Professor in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) where she lectures in German Studies and Children's & YA Literature Studies.  She is co-editor of Politics and Ideology in Children's Literature and has authored articles and book chapters on topics ranging from Alsatian Expressionist writer René Schickele (1883-1940), child exiles from the Nazi era to picturebooks engaging with migration in contemporary contexts.
She was a long-standing executive committee member of the Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature (ISSCL) and Vice-President / President of the Irish branch of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) as well as a board member of the Irish Humanities Alliance from December 2017-2020. She is a member of DCU's Centre for Translation and Textual Studies (CTTS) and was the CTTS Director from January 2017-August 2020. Since 2022 she is the Irish representative on the committee for Women in German Studies (UK and Ireland).

  She is a member of the DCU research team for the EU co-funded Creative Europe project G-Book 2: European teens as readers and creators (2020-2023). She is also the current Chair of the KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards and a regular reviewer of new children's and YA fiction for Children's Books Ireland (CBI). She is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal New Directions in the Humanities.