Tanja Schangin M.Sc.
Tanja Schangin
tanja.schangin@student.uni-halle.de
Tanja Schangin started as a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media and Communication Studies in the winter semester 2024/2025. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Ethnology and English (University of Heidelberg, 2017) and explored place-making through artistic practices and agency in Belfast in her BA thesis. During her practice-oriented Master’s in Film-Making and Media Arts (University of Glasgow, 2019), she produced a semi-animated documentary short film on the visual language of home and migration, focusing on haptic visuality, third space, ‘homing’, and hybrid narrative forms.
Tanja has extensive experience in the film and television industry, ranging from production, editing and animation to film criticism and festival assistance. Alongside her doctoral studies, she works as an animation and graphic designer at MDR, specialising in infographics, explainer animations and children's media.
Her dissertation project, “Seeing Beyond Words: Cultivating Emotional and Visual Literacy through Picture Books on Death, Grief and Loss” (working title), deepens her interest in visual language and is additionally supervised at the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (University of Cambridge). Drawing on interdisciplinary theories from the intersections of visual anthropology, literary critical analysis, cognitive psychology and education, Tanja investigates the potential of picture book illustrations to foster emotional intelligence and visual literacy in young readers dealing with experiences of death, grief, and loss. Using a mixed-methods approach, she combines literary analysis, interviews with picture book authors, surveys of adults, and creative workshops with children. She is also actively involved with the Intercultural Children’s and Youth Library “Weltoffen” in Leipzig.
Conferences
Schangin, Tanja (2026). “Danse Macabre with Bikes and Pastries: ‘Camp’ Aesthetics and the Carnivalesque of Personified Death in Contemporary Picture Books”. Presentation at the 4. International Conference on Children and Young Adults’ Literature: Nonsense and the Absurd in Children’s and YA Literature (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Baia Mare, Romania), 21. May 2026.
Schangin, Tanja (2026). “From Root Shock to Rhizomes: Visualising Home Loss and Post-Migration Belonging in Contemporary Picturebook Illustrations”. Presentation at the 20. The Child and the Book Conference: Diaspora(s), Exile, Nomads and Children's Literature (University of Crete), 29. May 2026.
Schangin, Tanja (2026). “A Phone Connected to Nowhere? The Child, Collective Mourning and Transnational Mediations of the Wind Phone in Contemporary Picturebooks”. Presentation at the 6. International Children’s Literature Symposium: The Citizen-Child - Global Perspectives on Children’s Literature and the Making of Modernity (University of Antwerp), 26. June 2026.
Teaching
Schangin, Tanja (2026). “Visual Literacy and Film Poster Design: Introduction, Case Studies, Practice.” Guest lecture in the seminar Analysis and Evaluation (led by Dr. Sebastian Pfau, Department of Media and Communication Studies) at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 19 January 2026.
Memberships
IRSCL (International Research Society for Children’s Literature)