Conference Program

This proposition aims to fuel reflection on the production of comics based on academic work by looking at the researchers involved in this process and the place of drawing in social science over time. I will base my thinking on my experience of drawing up scientific work. I have been involved in various processes going from personal drawings (mostly online) to one official publication (Richardier et al., 2023) and various other related experiences. I intend to build my presentation through two avenues of reflection: comics as a tool for differentiation for researchers and its consequences on the production of “scientific comics” in my work.

Drawings and comics are subjects of a so-called boom in anthropology and social sciences (Tondeur, 2018) linked to visual anthropology and art-based research (Leavy, 2019). However, comicization has been for me on one hand the result of this favourable context and on the other the result of a differentiation strategy. Comics are in social science a way to respond to new norms regarding the production of sciences but can also be seen as a solution to become more noticeable in a system under stress with very few careers’ opportunities. In this regard, comics are often used and produced by young scholars and very established researchers. In results, comics are both praised and slightly disregarded. I will discuss situations I encountered where various figures of precarity and power met through drawings, and how we reinforced or weakened each other.

This process is directly impacting the type of drawings “allowed” in social science and push for the development of criteria still very much unconscious and not well explored. I will explore how I have attempted to label my drawings as “scientific” to gain more recognition during the process of “comicization”. Drawings and comics are already recognized in science, as they allow many things: they can express subjectivity at work during research (Nocerino, 2016), they help to access to people’s representations, and they can be a way to do cooperative research where people can immediately comment on the researcher’s interpretation and not only be captured by a scientific gaze (Calandra, 2013; Ingold and Krier, 2021; Payet et al., 2022). However, not all forms of comics are equally acknowledged, and their use can illustrate the scientific standards behind the writing of articles and scientific work in general (Marc and Richardier, 2023).

This paper addresses the practical considerations which are created when comics-formatted research is included in the academic publishing cycle. The author has recently published two articles on the topic, "The Graphic 'I'" (Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, 2023), and “Rubric and Metrics for Peer Reviewing Research Comics”(The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, 2023), has organized a conference and several workshops related to the topic, and is currently acting as a guest editor at The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, co-curating as special issue focused on research comics (expected to be published in 2025). In the current state of the field, it is increasingly urgent to clearly and directly examine practices governing the creation, editing, and distribution of research comics, in order to make a concerted effort to move towards best practice.

From the perspectives of a creator of research comics, an editor of research comics, and a scholar reflecting on the practice in the field this paper will outline both the pitfalls and examples of best practice for: submission guidelines in calls for papers, editing workflows, peer review workflows, publication and printing formatting, publisher limits, dissemination of research in comics format, and, finally, reception of research in comics format. Issues related to the particularlities of research ethics in comics-based research methods will also be outlined, as illustrations become sensitive in the data collection phase, the write up phase, and the peer review and publishing phases. Examples of current practice are drawn from the work of Neil Cohn, Eszter Szep, Lydia Wysocki, Patrick Murphy, John Swogger, Stuart Medley, Paul Fisher Davies, Nick Sousanis, Marcus Weaver-Hightower, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, Bruce Mutard, Kay Sohini, and others. Examples of editorial practice are drawn from fully or partly anglophone journals, including Studies in Comics, Inks, The Comics Grid, The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, ImageText, European Comics Studies, and others. In addition to offering examples of current best practice, this paper will aim to highlight which parts of the process are perhaps in greatest need of debate and reflection, in the hopes of generating fruitful discussion for both this conference and beyond.

The world of comics in France has been witnessing a growing trend for the last decade : the comicization of academic research. More and more comics and graphic novels are being scripted by authors who had not traditionally used this medium to disseminate their work. In addition to journalists, social science researchers (including anthropologists, sociologists, historians, economists and political scientists) are entering the comics field as authors with products adapting specific scientific works, written for the occasion, or the outcome of a synthesis by "politically engaged" comics writers.
Based on a survey begun in the autumn of 2021, our paper examines the work involved in adapting social science works to the comics format. What practical constraints do researchers - and cartoonists - encounter in the comic-book economy of academic knowledge? What compromises can be made to translate (betray?) the aridity of academic work into comics? What are the realities of scientific work portrayed in comics? What do authors hold as benefits and drawbacks in putting their academic production into images?
Our research aims at reconstructing the conditions of this "comicization" of scientific works. Based on over 20 interviews with researcher-writers, publishers and cartoonists who put research into pictures, as well as on a reception survey still in progress, our paper will focus the underlying assumptions that sustains this trend: that is to say, turning research into comics would enable it to be disseminated to a wider audience. This presupposes a simplification of discourse that contrasts with the attention to details and nuances of academic work. It also means condensing the information to fit shorter formats. Finally, it requires the translation of scientific language into ordinary, visual language.
Our survey shows that the expected popularization is not always achieved, both quantitatively (sales figures) and qualitatively (the sociological broadening of the readership is often only partial). Above all, it shows that while the comic strip format removes some of the barriers inherent in academic publications, it also creates new and unexpected ones, specific to comic strip reading (difficult conceptual theorization, uncertain generalization, active contribution of the reader in decoding, etc.).

The aim of this talk is to discuss the comicisation of sociological research, i.e. the use of comics as a research method in sociology, particularly in the Italian case, focusing on specific research areas: Health and Illness, drawing on the research experiences of the interdisciplinary collective Graphic Medicine (Czerwiec et al. 2020); Gender Studies (Gibson 2016); Migration and Postcolonial Studies (Mehta, Mukherji 2015); Youth Studies and Subcultures (Aldama 2018). Although comics-based research is a fairly established field internationally (Kuttner et al. 2017, 2021; Moretti 2023), a specific analysis of the role of comics in sociological research is currently lacking, especially in Italy. We aim to fill this gap in the literature, exploring the various possibilities of conducting sociological research through comics. Using concrete empirical cases drawn from the authors' and others' research studies, we will discuss and compare the use of comics within more traditional research techniques such as participant observation (Forde 2022), in-depth interviews and visual socio-semiotic analysis, to participatory research techniques such as graphics-based workshops.

We argue that comics can make an original methodological contribution to social research, as a document for analysis, but also as an investigative tool to elicit reactions or memories, visualise lived experiences or co-construct narratives in a participatory perspective. From an ethical point of view, comics are particularly useful when dealing with sensitive issues or stigmatised behaviours. More specifically, they allow complex and abstract meanings to be conveyed, sometimes in indirect ways, and they provide a channel of expression for people who are often marginalised in qualitative research, such as children, migrants, queer and disabled people. Studying (or analysing) comics and graphic narratives make also possible to identify new marginalised groups, especially focusing on their difficulties to communicate through more traditional symbolic systems. The added value of comics as a research tool is the combination of words and images in the same panel, which helps to represent different levels of communication simultaneously and is particularly fruitful for the analysis of field notes. The latter refers to interaction, the different aspects of which are easier to grasp and understand with graphic research tools.