Previous Team Members
Will Grady: News Editor (2012-2015)
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
Laurike in ‘t Veld: Articles Editor (2014-2015)
Laurike in ‘t Veld is currently completing her PhD at the University of Chichester, on graphic narratives that deal with the Holocaust and the genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Her research interests include non-fictional comics, the representation of mass violence and genocide in popular culture, and discourses around (Holo)kitsch. She teaches on topics like the graphic novel, cinema and nationalism, American television drama, and war films. Recent publications include ‘Introducing the Rwandan Genocide from a Distance: American Noir and the Animal Metaphor in 99 Days’ in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Her research profile can be found here.
Emily Rabone: Organising Committee (2010-2013)
Emily Rabone has finished an MA in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Leeds. She was brought up in Tokyo, and has always been a fan of Manga and from there has expanded her interest to graphic narratives. The works of Osamu Tezuka has been a strong inspiration.
Hannah Wadle: Organising Committee (2010-2014)
Hannah started off as the conference camerawoman for Comics Forum 2010, enjoyed the event a lot and is now committed to Comics Forum 2011. In real life she is a social anthropologist, journalist and philanthropic taking regular baths in human everyday and tourism culture in different parts of Europe. She graduated with a Masters in History and European Ethnology from Freiburg University (Germany), started her PhD at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (Leeds Met.) about the socio-cultural impacts of post-socialist tourism on a small village in Northeast Poland and is continuing it now at Manchester University. Her interests in the medium of comics are comics as a new language for ethnography and comics and Socialism.
SMALL PRESS AND UNDERGROUNDS (2013)
Rebecca Macklin: Conference Director, ‘A Conference on Comics series (2013)
Rebecca Macklin holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Leeds and has worked in the publishing industry for a number of years. She is currently a publisher at an academic publishing house in West Yorkshire and is on the committee of the Society of Young Publishers North & Midlands. She has an abiding critical interest in literary and graphic representations of identity and how it is shaped by culture and trauma.
MULTICULTURALISM AND REPRESENTATION (2012)
Carolene Ayaka: Conference Director, ‘A Conference on Comics’ series (2012-13)
Dr Carolene Ayaka has a doctorate in social policy from the University of Chichester. She did her MA in Gender studies and diversity at the University of Bradford. Her main area of interest is identity; how it is theorised and presented as well as its negotiations and diverseness (thus far having mainly focused on African female identity). Her interest in comics stems from her enjoyment of exploring how they are used to represent and translate people’s everyday lives and imagined lives. She hopes to write a comic strip one day!
SCULPTURE AND COMIC ART (2011)
Kirstie Gregory: Conference Convenor
Kirstie Gregory is Research Programme Assistant at the Henry Moore Institute. She studied at the Courtauld Institute, London, and the University of Queensland, Australia.
Jon Wood: Conference Convenor
Jon Wood is Research Curator at the Henry Moore Institute. An art historian and curator, he specialises in twentieth-century and contemporary sculpture, with particular expertise in British sculpture.
He was co-editor, with Alex Potts and David Hulks, of the Modern Sculpture Reader (2007) and of the two-volume Sculpture in Twentieth-Century Britain (2003).
GRAPHIC MEDICINE: VISUALIZING THE STIGMA OF ILLNESS (2011)
Columba Quigley: Conference Director
Originally qualified in medicine, Columba Quigley completed an MA in Literature and Medicine in 2009. She is currently working on a PhD at the London Consortium on ‘Representations of Suffering’, which focuses on the visibility of mental illness in art and drawn literature.
Maria Vaccarella: Conference Director
Dr Maria Vaccarella is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Humanities and Health, King’s College London. Her main research field is narrative medicine and she has worked on medical-themed graphic novels, particularly on epilepsy and breast cancer. She is particularly interested in graphic depictions of illness embodiment and in how graphic illness narratives are being used in medical and patient education.
Ian Williams: Conference Director
Ian Williams runs the website GraphicMedicine.org and also draws comics under the pseudonym Thom Ferrier, publishing strips online and in print. He has trained in both medicine and fine art and has written for both medical and comics journals. His Medical Humanities MA dissertation was on medical narrative in comics and graphic novels.
MK Czerwiec: Blogger
MK Czerwiec (sir-wick) worked as an AIDS nurse from 1994-2000. When antiretrovirals enabled her Chicago AIDS ward to be closed, she started making comics under the pseudonym Comic Nurse. Czerwiec then earned an MA in Medical Humanities and Bioethics. She teaches “Drawing Medicine” at Northwestern Medical School and is working on an illustrated oral history of the AIDS crisis, “Taking Turns: A Medical Tragicomic.”
WOMEN IN COMICS II (2010)
Sarah Lightman: Conference Director
Sarah Lightman is an visual diarist and curator currently researching a Ph.D. in ‘Autobiographical Comics’ at the University of Glasgow. She has written on autobiographical comics and visual diaries for Studies in Comics and The International Journal of Comic Art. Sarah co- founded Laydeez do Comics, a monthly autobiographical comics forum with Nicola Streeten. Sarah is curating ‘Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women’, with Michael Kaminer, which features 18 international artists. Graphic Details has toured San Francisco, Toronto and opens in New York in late 2011.
Nicola Streeten: Conference Director
An illustrator since 1996, Nicola is studying for a Master of Research in Art, Architecture and Design degree at The University of Lincoln. Her research area is gender and the graphic novel. Streeten’s first graphic novel, Billy, Me & You was published by Myriad Editions in October 2011. It appears in serialised form in Liquorice Magazine.
She is co-creator, with artist Sarah Lightman of Ladeez do Comics, a monthly graphic novel forum with a focus on the new wave of comic work, more domestic than superheroes, based on the drama of everyday life. www.streetenillustration.com
Hattie Kennedy: Organising Committee
See above for bio.
Catriona MacLeod: Organising Committee
Catriona MacLeod is currently in the third year of her PhD entitled ‘Invisible Presence: The Representation of Women in the Francophone Bande Dessinée’ at the University of Glasgow. Her recent publications include reviews for the journal European Comic Art and her article ‘Adopting and Adapting: Ethnic Minority Women’s Quest for Identity in the Bande Dessinée’ will be published shortly in the forthcoming Peter Lang title Adaptations.
Rikke Platz-Cortsen: Organising Committee
Rikke Platz Cortsen is a PhD scholar at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Arts and Cultural Studies working on a thesis concerning time and space in comics. She recently hosted the international academic conference Contemporary Comics in Copenhagen and was on the organizing committee for Women in Comics II. She has written articles and presented papers on Danish comics artist Claus Deleuran, Swedish female comics artists, Arkham Asylum and time and space in the works of Alan Moore which was the main subject of her MA thesis. She is on the editorial board of the Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art.
Emily Rabone: Organising Committee
See above for bio.
Comics Forum 