Miranda is a social justice entrepreneur who has spent 35 years turning kitchen table ideas into nationwide campaigns, culminating in founding The Reading Agency in 2002. The charity’s Summer Reading Challenge now involves 800,000 children every year. 

Having “retired” to go trekking, she became fascinated by the building body of research showing that reading builds empathy, which led her to found EmpathyLab.

Sarah is one of EmpathyLab’s founders whose library background has long convinced her of the power of stories to change children’s lives. 

She is the Programme Manager at Libraries Connected. 

Fozia is Service Development Coordinator for Children and Access with Manchester Libraries. Fozia has developed the EmpathyLab offer across all 22 libraries in a city-wide approach to embed Empathy as part of the core library offer. 

Supporting the city's Read Manchester campaign, Fozia brings authors and poets to the city, organises the Summer Reading Challenge programme and teaches English online to children in China in the other part of her working week! 

Scott is a primary school teacher, reading for pleasure enthusiast and children’s books consultant, critic and influencer. He reads, reviews and recommends a range of children's literature on his website The Reader Teacher which is designed for teachers, schools, parents and children to find the best books. 

Scott has been a judge on the panels for the Blue Peter Book Awards, the Laugh Out Loud Book Awards (Lollies), the Branford Boase Award and the Wales Book of the Year Award. Scott has previously appeared on and written for BBC Teach discussing ideas on how to encourage a love of reading and raising children as readers. He also hosts #PrimarySchoolBookClub - a monthly online children's book club, chat and vote for anyone working in primary education.

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.

Sonia is the Head Teacher at St Matthew’s C.E. Primary School, in Nechells, Birmingham: the first winner of the OU/UKLA Whole School Reading for Pleasure School of the Year. She is passionate about evidence-based reading for pleasure practices and places these at the heart of the school. 

She has run an OU/UKLA Teachers’ Reading Group for two years and is an advisor for the OU/UKLA Research Rich Pedagogies website. She has spoken at various conferences about RfP, including Peters Love Literacy and ResearchED. Sonia is a co-opted member of the UKLA National Council, representing the Teacher Reading Groups.

Richard is an experienced Key Stage 2 teacher and Professional Teaching Enhancement Lead of English at Springwell School, Heston. He is an advisor for the OU/UKLA Research Rich Pedagogies website and has spoken at various conferences exploring Creative Writing, picturefiction and Reading for Pleasure. Richard is the UKLA representative for London.

Having studied the effect that graphic novels may have on their readers in his own research, he is interested in developing children’s empathy through a wider range of texts. He Tweets @rcharlesworth.

Teresa Cremin a Professor of Education (Literacy) at The Open University (OU). An ex-teacher and teacher educator, Teresa currently undertakes research and consultancy in the UK and abroad on volitional reading and writing.

Her research has spawned a reading for pleasure website https://ourfp.org/ and wider movement which supports over 100 OU/ UKLA Teacher Reading Groups annually, has 32 HEI partners and currently works with over 70 whole schools in yearlong CPD to develop the habit of reading in childhood. Teresa is a Reading Expert on the DfE English Hub Council, and co-director of the OU Centre for Literacy and Social Justice.

Kevin has been a teacher for 24 years in Primary Schools across the West Midlands and a reader for as long as he can remember. During his career he has held the positions of Literacy Co-ordinator, Assistant Headteacher and Deputy Headteacher. He has also worked as a Senior Lecturer in Primary Education at Birmingham City University. He currently works at The University of Birmingham School with Students in Years 7, 8 and 9 to support and develop their Literacy and Numeracy skills. 

He is an avid reader, a massive fan of Philip Pullman and enjoys sharing a love of books with his classes and colleagues. He is also head of Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction at VIP Reading and has created a number of resources for the Reading Realm. He is passionate about the importance of Reading for Pleasure and exploring how it can be promoted in Schools and Communities.

Paul has worked in education for almost 30 years, working across all key stages, in FE, HE, adult education, managing training for the NHS and working in the third sector. Since 2014 he was a teacher at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School, an in-patient mental health setting. 

He is currently working at Cleeve Meadow School in Kent.

Subnum has over 20 years of experience in the public library and museum sector and is currently Library and Information Manager for Oldham Libraries.

She is Chair of the Libraries Connected North West Regional Group, a Trustee of The Reading Agency and on the Diversity Steering Group for Curious Minds.

Sarah is the Libraries Development Manager for Brent Libraries. Her role involves the planning and delivery of strategic service provision for libraries covering children and young people's services, adult learning and adult reading services. 

A highlight of her role was being a lead partner with Apples and Snakes arts organisation for the delivery of the Spine annual arts and literature festival for children and young people across half of London.

Dawn has spent all her career mainly with a Schools’ Library Service, moving to include children’s libraries, then back as manager of SLS. 

She has more recently brought that knowledge and experience to the School Library Association where she still enjoys the challenge of getting the right book into the hands of students and teachers who need a particular book for a specific need at any one time.

Morgan, from Conwy, North Wales, graduated from Bangor University in 2013 with a degree in Geography BSc before going on to do a PGCE course there. After training as a foundation phase teacher, he went on to work in Conwy County teaching KS2 Primary. Whilst there he undertook a Masters with Cardiff University looking at reading comprehension amongst primary children, specifically using the reciprocal reading method. 

Morgan began his PhD at Bangor University in the School of Educational Sciences with a research focus on developing new bilingual reading resources. During the pandemic, Morgan set up ‘Sôn am Lyfra’, a website that posts regular bilingual reviews of Welsh language books for children and young people. 

When Morgan isn’t busy reading all the amazing children’s literature being published here in Wales, he’s normally walking the Carneddau mountains or out training with Conwy Lifeboat, and has been a volunteer crewmember there for the last 12 years.

Angharad is a passionate advocate of reading for pleasure and the importance of individual reader choice. As a Project Development Manager she works with schools, libraries and other organisations such as The Reading Agency and World Book Day UK to develop reading promotion projects, events and campaigns that help to inspire a love of reading. She has worked at the Books Council Wales since 2012 and was previously at Booktrust. 

Scott is a primary school teacher, reading for pleasure enthusiast and children’s books consultant, critic and influencer. He reads, reviews and recommends a range of children's literature on his website The Reader Teacher which is designed for teachers, schools, parents and children to find the best books.  

Scott has been a judge on the panels for the Blue Peter Book Awards, the Laugh Out Loud Book Awards (Lollies), the Branford Boase Award and the Wales Book of the Year Award. Scott has previously appeared on and written for BBC Teach discussing ideas on how to encourage a love of reading and raising children as readers. He also hosts #PrimarySchoolBookClub - a monthly online children's book club, chat and vote for anyone working in primary education.

Having taught History, Politics and Sociology for over twenty-five years Huw left the classroom in 2019 to become an educational advisor for the ERW Consortium. He is passionate about developing both BAME and Welsh history in every school in Wales and believes that books and reading provides an invaluable opportunity to achieve this goal.  

Over the last for years Huw has worked extensively on writing and developing the Curriculum for Wales 2022. He is currently working for Powys County Council as Post 14 Lead for Learning.

Jennifer Ford is the Headteacher of Treorchy Comprehensive School in Swansea for students aged 11-18. At her previous post as Headteacher at Pentrehafod School, she was proud to be part of the first EmpathyLab cluster in Wales. 

Jennifer has been a passionate advocate of children’s books both as a mother and a teacher. 

Steffan was brought up through the Welsh education system in the Aberystwyth area. After studying for a Biology degree in Aberystwyth University, he decided to take a year out and worked as a teaching assistant at a special needs unit. This led him to following a primary PGCE course at Bangor University. He has been teaching Key Stage 2 pupils for 5 years, 4 of these in Ciliau Parc School, Ceredigion. 

Steffan is keen to develop enthusiasm and imagination through reading.

Bethan Hughes is Principal Librarian with Denbighshire Libraries and has worked in libraries for over 33 years. Her early career was in children’s and school librarianship and she has been actively involved in the strategic development of national initiatives around children, books and reading in Wales such as Bookstart, the Summer Reading Challenge, and Reading Well. A fluent Welsh speaker, she is currently the SCL Cymru lead for Books and Reading, and serves on the Libraries Connected Advisory Board and on the SRC Strategy Group. She has been a judge for the Tir na n-Og prize on several occasions, and was Wales Public Librarian of the Year in 2013. 

In her other life, Bethan is an exhibiting textile artist, choral singer and gardener.