News Review Correspondents

Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto: Correspondent for Japan

Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto is a full-time lecturer at Ryukoku University, Faculty of Intercultural Communication. She came to Japan after completing degrees in Japanese Studies and Anthropology at Leuven Catholic University, and in 2007 received her Ph.D. from Osaka University. Her research focuses on issues of gender and ethnicity in popular culture, and she has published numerous papers and essays in the field of comics studies.

Enrique del Rey Cabero: Correspondent for Spain

After finishing his literary and linguistics studies in the University of Salamanca, Enrique gained experience teaching Spanish in Spain, Belgium and Australia, and he is now a Lector in Spanish at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the use of comics in language teaching and the role of comics in collective memory. He is currently enrolled in a PhD program (Universidad de Granada) exploring the protocols of reading and formal innovation in contemporary comics. For more information, see http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/delreycabero

Benoît Crucifix: Correspondent for Belgium/France

Benoît Crucifix holds MAs in Modern Languages and Literature (Université catholique de Louvain) and Literary Theory (KU Leuven). He is a FNRS doctoral fellow and develops a research project on contemporary graphic novelists and the heritage of comics, jointly at the Université de Liège, as a member of the ACME comics research group, and at the Université catholique de Louvain. He has previously worked on materiality, serialisation and database aesthetics in Chris Ware’s Building Stories. He regularly writes for comics website du9 and Graphixia.

Shelley Culbertson: Correspondent for Ireland

Shelley Culbertson is a PhD researcher in the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. She holds a BA in Media Studies and a Masters of Research in Genders and Sexuality within Sequential Art. Her thesis topic is “A Psychoanalytical Analysis of Pre-Oedipal and Oedipal Representations of Selected Comic Book Heroines”. She is currently working on an article discussing the unconscious fascination with death and displacement within Irish mythic narrative and the impact such story telling has had on the comic creators in N Ireland. Her particular interest is in the up and coming London Derry based Zombie Hi! series.

Will Grady: Correspondent for the UK

William Grady is currently undertaking his PhD in the dept. English at the University of Dundee, focusing on subverting Frontier Mythology in Western comic books. His research into Western comics has previously appeared in the anthologies, Comic Books and American Cultural History, and Undead in the West II. He currently peer reviews for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and holds a teaching position in the department of Film and Media at Manchester Metropolitan University. More info: williamgrady.wordpress.com

Felipe Gómez Gutiérrez: Correspondent for Mexico

Felipe Gómez Gutiérrez is Associate Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is currently researching in Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Literatures from The University of Michigan. He is the Latin American Popular Culture chair for the Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. He has presented papers at several international conferences and has published papers and book chapters on comics studies in international journals and edited volumes, and is co-organizing panels and a comics exhibit for the 2017 Latin American Studies Association Conference in Lima (Peru). His current research focuses on representations of dystopia in Latin American comics. For more information, see https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/modlang/people/faculty/felipe-gomez.html.

Martin de la Iglesia: Correspondent for DACH (Deutschland, Austria & Switzerland)

Martin de la Iglesia studied Art History and Library and Information Science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2007 he wrote his Master’s Thesis in London on the reception of US comics in the United Kingdom. Currently he is a PhD student at Heidelberg University (dissertation topic: the early reception of manga in the West). At the same time he works as a librarian in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. His fields of interest in research include comics, art geography, reception history and aesthetics, and art historical methodology. All of his publications are available in Open Access. He blogs at http://650centplague.wordpress.com/

Mihaela Precup: Correspondent for Romania

Mihaela Precup is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest, Romania. Her main research interests include trauma studies, autobiographical comics, and family photography. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship with the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale University (2006-2007). She edited a volume of essays entitled American Visual Memoirs after the 1970s. Studies on Gender, Sexuality, and Visibility in the Post-Civil Rights Age (Bucharest: Bucharest University Press, 2010).

Ranatta Rafaela: Correspondent for Portugal

Renatta Rafaella holds a MA in Architecture from the Universidade de Coimbra. She has presented papers at several international conferences as an independent researcher, and her field of interest in research includes comics, architecture, videogames and pedagogy. Apart from research, she also works as a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and animator. For more information, you can visit her website at http://renatta.co.nf

Moray Rhoda: Correspondent for South Africa

Moray Rhoda is a Cape Town based designer and illustrator and founder of Igubu Comics Collective. After leaving Igubu he self-published two Clockworx comics and co-organised Comics Brew 2006 with Grant Muller. Moray was the art director at Media 24′s Beat Comics studio, producing the comics Unicity, Mzansi Beats and Kasiwash. The studio was shut down in 2006. He is currently self-publishing a South Africa/Australia collaboration graphic novel anthology, Velocity (www.gaining-velocity.com). Since 2012 Moray has been involved with organizing Co/Mix @ Open Book, an annual SA event giving the public an opportunity to meet and support some of SA’s best cartoonists, illustrators and comic artists.

Eszter Szép: Correspondent for Hungary

Eszter Szép is a PhD candidate at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She earned her MA’s at the same institution in English Language and Literature (2008) and in Hungarian Language and Literature (2010). She loves talking about her beloved comics at conferences, and deadlines usually motivate her to publish some of these talks. Eszter is a representative of the Hungarian Comics Association, organiser of comic-related events and festivals in Hungary, and with her reviews, interviews and lectures she tries to raise the acceptance of comics in Hungary.

Lise Tannahill: Correspondent for France

Lise Tannahill is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, where she also gained her MA (Hons) in French and Spanish. Her research focuses on representations of French minority cultures in francophone bande dessinée: particularly Brittany and the Bretons, but also including areas such as Corsica. Her research interests include pre-1945 bande dessinée, European minority languages and regional identities.

Lim Cheng Tju: Correspondent for Singapore/South-East Asia

Lim Cheng Tju is an educator who writes about history and popular culture in Singapore. His articles have appeared in the Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, Journal of Popular Culture and Print Quarterly. He is the country editor (Singapore) for the International Journal of Comic Art and also the co-editor of Liquid City 2, an anthology of Southeast Asian comics published by Image Comics. He is one of the authors of The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (Amsterdam University Press).

Lida Tsene: Correspondent for Greece

Lida Tsene holds a PhD from Panteion University, Department of Communication, Media and Culture. Apart from academic books on corporate and media responsibility, social media and cultural management, she reads loads of comics. She tries to share everything she learns, and thatʼs why she participates in many conferences about CSR, journalism, social media and comics and also organizes educational workshops. She likes to talk a lot about the things she is passionate about, so she is collaborating as teaching associate with several academic institutions. She is also Public Relations, Art and Educational Director of Comicdom Press. She believes in the power of networks, thatʼs why she has friends all over the world. For more information, see http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lida-tsene/b/999/2a4

Asta Vrečko: Correspondent for Slovenia

Asta Vrečko (Slovenia) is a PhD student of Art History, at the Faculty of Arts and a junior researcher at the Department of Art Pedagogy, Faculty of Pedagogy, University of Ljubljana. She contributes art critiques to several Slovenian magazines and is actively involved in various non-governmental initiatives in Ljubljana. She is a member of advisory board of the Workers’ and Punks’ University; editorial board of online art history publication published by Slovene Art History Society and of editorial board of Borec, Journal for History, Anthropology and Literature.

Peter Wilkins: Correspondent for Canada

Peter Wilkins works for The Training Group at Douglas College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a founding editor of the comics blog Graphixia with David N. Wright. He has a PhD in American Literature and Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine.