Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This special issue is special in a very special sense: the threads that weave through its articles are primarily youth and freshness, not as main themes of the volume, nor as keywords that reflect its content, but rather as the features that characterize the nine young in age novice researchers who have contributed to it. Most of them were our MA students attending postgraduate programmes at the Department of English Language and Literature, NKUA and the Department of English, UNC Charlotte. It was their enthusiasm for research and the high quality of their work from the early days of their MA studies which prompted us, their tutors, to challenge them even further, a challenge they accepted with even greater enthusiasm: it was agreed that right after finishing their MA studies, they would take the plunge and try to make their first appearance in academia, presenting original work that emanates from, but also expands on, their own research as postgraduate students. It has been claimed that young researchers are “widely recognized as being among the most creative and energetic researchers” (Soror and Kassen 2014, 7). Indeed, the young researchers publishing their work in this volume share deep theoretical knowledge in their areas of study, while following research interests that lie in largely unexplored areas. In this sense, they all seem to show deference to the claims and findings of previous studies while, at the same time, striving for novelty and originality, a tension commonly experienced by newcomers to a disciplinary academic community (Hyland 2009, 68).