It’s that time of the year again! I am excited to be participating in Comics Forum 2026: Welfare, taking place at Leeds City Library on 12–13 November 2026. The conference brings together researchers and practitioners to explore welfare in relation to comics, including questions of health, disability, community, representation and the wellbeing of comics creators and readers.
On Thursday 12 November, at 3.30 pm, I’ll be joining Francesca Benatti (The Open University) and Natalie Divin (The Open University) for our workshop, ‘Building a Network: Webcomics for Wellbeing (W4W)’.
Our session seeks to explore the potential of reading, creating and sharing webcomics to support young people’s wellbeing. Building on research into the benefits of arts engagement, reading for pleasure and Graphic Medicine, we want to investigate whether comics can contribute to wellbeing beyond those that explicitly address health-related subjects.
We will invite participants to help us think through how webcomics are read, discussed, created and shared, and how these participatory practices might or not contribute to wellbeing. Our aim is to begin building a network bringing together comics readers, creators, curators, researchers, healthcare professionals and youth wellbeing organisations to explore new approaches to supporting young people through webcomics.
You can find the full programme and our abstract here:
Conference: https://comicsforum.org/comics-forum-2026-welfare/
Programme: https://comicsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/comics-forum-2026-programme.pdf
Abstracts and speaker biographies: https://comicsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/cf2026-abstracts.pdf
Many thanks to the Comics Forum organisers for having us!
We’re looking forward to sharing ideas, meeting fellow comics researchers and practitioners, and starting conversations and collaborations around webcomics and wellbeing in Leeds.
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