As part of the Billiken Centenary Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Dr Lauren Rea has been working alongside Euhen Matarozzo, director of Billiken, as she researches the history of the world’s longest-running children’s magazine. This collaboration not only has been crucial for the research project itself, but it has also generated valuable inputs that are underpinning some of the plans for the future of this heritage brand.

In June 2019, Lauren Rea and

Lauren and
On 27th and 28th June, Lauren and

On the evening of 28th June, the Argentine Embassy hosted a conference and reception at the Residence of Ambassador Carlos Sersale di Cerisano to commemorate Billiken’s forthcoming centenary. In recognition of the central place that Billiken has occupied in Argentine cultural life over the past one hundred years, Lauren and


To finish their tour through the United Kingdom, Lauren and Euhen attended the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield from 2nd to 4th July, holding industry meetings with potential investors and collaborative partners. Reflecting on his visit, Euhen Matarozzo said, “Working with Lauren has helped us to position Billiken for the future. We have rediscovered the spirit of innovation upon which Billiken was founded and are working to ensure that this iconic product endures for another hundred years. My visit to the UK has been a great opportunity to spread the word about Billiken, a great Argentine – and Latin American – cultural institution.”


Symposium on Latin American Periodicals, UCL, June 2019
Keynote Speakers
Sandra Szir (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina)
Benjamin Smith (University of Warwick)
Organisers: Claire Lindsay (UCL), Lauren Rea (University of Sheffield), Maria Chiara D’Argenio (UCL)
In a field of study that has consolidated largely in Anglophone modernist studies, what and how is research being conducted on periodicals that have been produced and published in Latin America?
How are the region’s periodicals regarded as sources of historical knowledge; as material and aesthetic objects; and as pedagogical tools? What are the values attached to them by their creators, readers, and researchers? How are magazines and periodicals in Latin America distinctive from those of/in other parts of the world? And how useful are methodological frameworks developed in Anglophone scholarship in Latin America and vice versa? What are the methodologies and vocabularies that scholars of periodicals can share? How can work in/on Latin America enhance and/or expand emerging paradigms in periodical studies? And what are the differences determined by working on such materials in different disciplines and regions of Latin America?
Considering the periodical as an autonomous object of study as well as a gateway to local and transnational cultures and histories, this conference aims to interrogate ways of reading and researching magazines and periodicals in Latin America: to consider how these heterogeneous, intermedial and serialised forms traverse boundaries between high, middle, and low brow as well as those between nations and between past and present.