About Ernesto

University of Cambridge, July 2023. Photo by Peter Wilkins.

I have been an advocate for comics studies since the early 1990s.

You can find a list of my publications here.

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 diverse yet related fields and topics, including data science, data visualisation, information science, comics scholarship, digital humanities, library science, open access publishing, online and mobile journalism, social media, open data and scholarly communications.

As a researcher based at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City, University of London, I have explored the role of comics as narrative, conceptual and speculative design tools and applies user-centred, participatory co-design methods to the creation of comics within public health or social interest domains.

I led the “Parables of Care. Responses to Dementia Care” project (2017-2021), which explored the potential of comics to enhance the impact of dementia care research.

I co-founded The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship in 2010 and I have co-edited the journal since January 2011. I pioneered scholarly-led open access in the UK before it was mandated in the country.

Recent PhD Supervision

  • First supervisor (external): Metáforas visuales del horror en los cómics femeninos (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2022- ongoing).
  • First supervisor: UK Digital Comics: From Reading to Consumption (2019- ongoing)
  • First supervisor: Whose Streets?: Urban Spatial Imaginaries in Superhero Narratives (2022- ongoing)
  • Second supervisor: Exploring the Impact of Icon Similarity on User Performance in Limited-sized Screens (completed; 2020)
  • Second supervisor: Augmenting Communication Technologies with Non-Primary Sensory Modalities (completed; 2018)
  • Second supervisor: Serious leisure in the digital world: exploring the information behaviours of fan communities (completed; 2016)

Recent Internal and External PhD Examinations

  • Exploration of New Approaches to Expressing Cycling Experience (City, University of London, 2023)
  • Sunbeam Braid: Verbal Solidarity and Quantitative Approaches to Comics Theory and Criticism (University of East Anglia, 2021)
  • Flowstory: The Efficacy of Storytelling Techniques Applied to the Visualisation of Flow and Movement Data (City, University of London, 2020)
  • Supporting the discoverability of Open Educational Resources (Open University, 2020)
  • Open Access Policy in the UK: From Neoliberalism to the Commons (Birkbeck College, University of London 2019)
  • Narrative Construction in Data Visualization (City, University of London 2016)

You can find me on LinkedIn here.