Ideas Alive – Diversity Drop: What’s Happening in Young Adult Fiction Now?

Dr Aneesh Barai - School of Education

4 November, 2025 at 6:00 pm

There has been a steep drop in diversity in children’s literature, bucking the trend of years of steady increase. How is Young Adult literature responding to the politicisation of diversity? Dr Aneesh Barai, Professor Karen Sands-O’Connor, author and columnist Dr Darren Chetty and award-winning author Sita Brahmachari, discuss their creative and critical writing about diverse youths in literature.

Ideas Alive is a series of podcasts by academics from the University of Sheffield talking about their fascinating research. A podcast link will go live on the festival website on the date and time publicised. Once live the episode can be listened to anytime, with other episodes from the series, on the University of Sheffield Player