Presenting at Better Living Through Comics: The 2023 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society, Cambridge, 3-7 July 2023

~ Ernesto Priego
Better Living Through Comics The 2023 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society Conference art by Tanitoc of a comic book as a house/teng with a human figure with a cup of coffee/tea sheltering from the storm outside under it. The figure's head resembles a sun which is inside one of the panels of the comic book's open page. Bad alt but I tried!

I am pleased to share I’ll be attending The 2023 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the
International Bande Dessinée Society on the week of 3-7 July. It is being hosted by The Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK.

This year’s topic is one close to my heart (most literally if I may say so) and attending is a decision I did not take lightly.

On Thursday, July 6, 9:15-10:45 am, (session 7; room 1S7), I am honoured to be chairing a panel titled ‘Comics, Gender, and Subjectivity’. The panel will feature presentations by Julia Round, Surangama Datta, and Rhiannon McGlade. I can’t wait!

On Friday, July 7, 2-3:30pm, (session 12; room 1S3), I will be presenting within the panel titled ‘Comics and Wellbeing in Special Times and Places’.

My paper’s title is ‘Co-Designing Comics to Understand People’s Experiences of Public Health Challenges‘.

In this presentation I will describe the user-centred research methods involved in the creation of comics focusing on people’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following up on our previous comics work on dementia care (Priego, Wilkins & Grennan 2017; Wilkins; Priego & Martins 2020), I will focus on the work I led on between March 2020 and March 2022:

  • “A Comic Visualising the Experience of Video-conferencing with Aging Parents During the COVID-19 Pandemic “(Wilkins & Priego 2020)
  • “Community Matters: Please Be Kind. (A COVID-19 Response Comic)” (Priego, de la Mora & Huddy 2020)
  • “A Day in Lockdown (A COVID-19 Response Comic)” (de la Mora, Priego and Scott 2021); and
  • “Living with Covid” While Clinically Vulnerable: A Real-Life Story.” (Priego, Pérez & de la Mora, 2022).

I will discuss the theoretical and practical underpinnings of these works, engaging with the concepts of empathy and wellbeing from a self-conscious auto-ethnographic perspective. Beyond creating further scholarly awareness of these comics, a main objective of the presentation will be to offer practical methodological insights, including ethical and technical issues in the creation of comics investigating people’s experiences of public health challenges.

Looking forward to this year’s conference! Many thanks to Joe, Sing, and everyone making the conference possible.

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Published by Ernesto Priego

My passion is creating opportunities for discovery, creativity and innovation. I am an advocate for enhanced access to information as a public good. I enjoy fostering engagement and openness, facilitating collaboration and mentoring. My main focus is multi-disciplinary and involves practically and theoretically connecting the dots between varied, closely-related fields and topics: comics studies; human-computer interaction design, library and information science, digital humanities, scholarly communications, publishing studies, digital innovation and material culture, intellectual rights and open science, access, data and educational resources. I love writing and spreading the word about the things I believe in. I love higher education and the Internet and I define myself as a digital scholarship advocate. I love working collaboratively and on my own. You can still follow me and/or contact me via Twitter @ernestopriego.