Speakers
Abdelalim Amine Slimani is a Moroccan photographer, writer, and interdisciplinary artist (b. 1992) whose work explores the shifting boundaries between human vision and machine-generated imagery. His practice moves fluidly between documentary photography, conceptual image-making, and computational experimentation, drawing on the visual languages of sequencing, grids, and fragmentary narratives. In recent years, he has focused on how synthetic images, dataset modulation, and algorithmic drift reshape authorship and the aesthetics of visual storytelling.
Andrea Tosti is a Digital Humanities researcher and PhD candidate at Lancaster University. Their work examines how comics pages function as multimodal epistemic media, focusing on how page-level visual relations support complex sense-making. In their doctoral thesis, The Untapped Grid, they develop the concept of the comics-fact and theorise comics pages as diagrammatic and cartographic interfaces. Their current research turns to generative AI, using AI-assisted comics and hybrid human–AI workflows to probe models' limits in maintaining page-level coherence.
A.B Fominaya is a new-media artist exploring physical materials, computation, and sequential storytelling. Their practice investigates human-machine co-creation through robotic arms, pen plotters, and computational knitting systems. In 2023 they received the Judson-Morrisey Excellence in New Media Award. Currently a PhD student in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, their work aims to lower technical barriers in digital fabrication, positioning the machine as an active agent in the construction of meaningful artwork. They co-organized a symposium commemorating 100 Years of Colombian Comics in 2023.
Björn-Olav Dozo is a full professor in digital humanities and video game cultures at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication of the University of Liège. He is the co-founder of the ACME research group on comics and coordinator of the ACME series at the Presses universitaires de Liège. He has co-edited several books and special journal issues on comics, and was formerly editor-in-chief of Comicalités (2021–2023).
David Mitchell is a gallery director, writer, and curator working in the contemporary art field. His personal curatorial projects include Bullet Hell, a group show concerned with information overload, and Hyperframe, a solo show of Roger Brown's comics-adjacent paintings, at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago. As a comic artist and theorist, he has presented papers on modern/post-modern frictions in the work of Enki Bilal, and the history of "heteronormative queerness" in indie comics.
Dr Eyal Gruss is an artist, coder, poet, algorithms researcher, and teaches computational creativity at the Holon Institute of Technology. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and is a Talpiyot elite program graduate, a freelance machine learning researcher and consultant, and a mentor for Google startups. His works were exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival, Print Screen Festival, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Tel Aviv Museum, and elsewhere.
Giorgio Busi Rizzi is FWO post-doctoral fellow at Ghent University, where he is also adjunct professor, teaching English Literature and Comics and Graphic Novel courses. His PhD analysed nostalgic aesthetics and practices in contemporary graphic novels. His post-doctoral project Experimental Digital Comics: Forms and Functions was funded by Ghent University.
Claudia Cerulo is a postdoctoral researcher in Comparative Literature at Università Mercatorum on a project on AI and comics. She previously worked at the University of Naples on the project PANIC. Her forthcoming monograph Auditory Perception in Twentieth-Century Self-Narratives (Bloomsbury, 2025) examines connections between auditory perception and the formation of subjectivity in autobiographical literature.
Gunnar Krantz has contributed to contemporary comics as an artist, pedagogue, editor, critic, and researcher since the late 1970s. His research focuses on artistic production, forms of publications, and the emergence of the field of comics in Sweden. In his recent project Autographic Double Exposure, funded by the Swedish Research Council, he argues for a clear connection between Töpffer's use of autography and the contemporary use of risography, both in terms of artistic practice and publishing.
Dr Hailey J Austin is a Lecturer in Visual Media and Culture and Programme Lead for the BA (Hons) Game Design and Production programme at Abertay University. Her research interests include the global creative industries — comics, zines, and games — in the UK, Sweden, and China. She is also passionate about amplifying marginalised voices in these creative industries.
Ioannis Siglidis is a postdoctoral researcher at the Pioneer Center for AI in Copenhagen, working on modelling Digital Narratives under the supervision of Serge Belongie. His scholarship-funded PhD in Computer Vision at École des Ponts in Paris studied how synthesis methods can be used to mine visual summaries of diverse data archives. He is a computer scientist by training, graduate of MVA (ENS-Paris Saclay) and ECE-NTUA.
Jiahao Ji is a PhD research student at Kingston University. Her research focuses on enhancing the therapeutic potential of visual metaphors and comics to improve mental health. She is currently developing a visual intervention method and guidance booklet for creating metaphorical comics to support daily emotional self-care for individuals with anxiety. Her practice-based research emphasises co-creation with art therapists and mental health professionals.
Dr Katharina Steidl is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Art and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and fellow of the FWF Elise Richter Senior Postdoc Programme. Her research focuses on the history and theory of photography, media and knowledge history, and the epistemology of norms. Her doctoral dissertation received the DGPh Research Award for the History of Photography and the Award of Excellence from the Austrian Ministry of Science.
Kevin Hamilton is a media artist, scholar, and administrator at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he also serves as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research. His vanguard work on the history of nuclear test photography resulted in Lookout America! (Dartmouth, 2019). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Leonardo Series for MIT Press and is a co-founder of Ground Works, an online journal for arts-integrative scholarship.
Lucy Perineau is a cartoonist, illustrator, translator, and PhD candidate at Université de Poitiers and École Européenne Supérieure de l'Image, Angoulême. She teaches comics practice and research methodology at ESA St Luc-Bruxelles.
Deborah Lambert is a postdoctoral researcher in geography at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focuses on imaginaries at work in urban transitions, integrating speculative storytelling and collaborative drawing to explore collective empowerment.
Aurore Fransolet is a senior researcher in ecological economics, holding the Just Transitions Chair at the Université libre de Bruxelles and a postdoctoral position at Sciences Po Paris. She develops a research agenda on the governance of just transitions from a post-growth perspective.
Maria Ryabova is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, completing her dissertation Robotics Masculinities: Gendered Technologies of Future-Making in Spring 2026. Drawing on twenty-four months of ethnographic fieldwork in robotics laboratories and Big Tech offices in the U.S., her research compares two contrasting robotics worlds. She engages in creative-critical practice, including comics and speculative media as feminist ethnographic methods.
Mathieu Li-Goyette is a film critic, film programmer, editor-in-chief of Panoramacinéma, and a comics scholar with a PhD in comparative literature from the Université de Montréal. His dissertation examined chalk talking and the emergence of comic strips in American newspapers. A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, he co-founded the Montréal Critics' Week and was awarded the 2025 John A. Lent Scholarship in Comics Studies.
Dr Ray Whitcher is a South African-born lecturer of comic making, animation, and game design at Uppsala University's Department of Game Design. His core research focus is Intermedial Narratology, with special interest in Intergenre and Transcultural Comic Making found within the African Diaspora. He is a practicing comic maker and animator, with titles SPOEK and Wanton on Tapas.io, and has drawn comics for Star Wars: Clone Wars Confidential.
Robert Aman is Senior Associate Professor in Education at Linköping University. His work on comics includes the monographs När Fantomen blev svensk (Daidalos), Serier för vuxna (Lystring), and New Left Comics (Routledge).
Erik Nylander is Senior Associate Professor of Education at Linköping University. His research combines computational methods with cultural sociology. He currently leads two programmes supported by the Swedish Research Council, including Against the Algos.
PhD in Comics (research-creation) at FoReLLIS, Université de Poitiers, and artist, Sabine Teyssonneyre defended in 2024 her thesis Tout faire apparaître: magie, minimalisme et œuvres d'art dans la bande dessinée indépendante et expérimentale contemporaine. She has written on non-professional drawing in Webtoons, the representation of speed in comics, and immediate time in performance and contemporary comics. She is co-founder of FutureOff, an independent micro-edition festival, and a member of the comics research network La Brèche.
Shweta Gupta is pursuing her Master's in English and Spanish Literature from IGNOU, India. She graduated with a degree in English Literature from Delhi University and is a Spanish language professional (C1.1 level) with approximately 16 years of corporate experience in business research, content development, and the translation industry. She has presented research papers at many international literature conferences.
Dr Simon Grennan is an awarded scholar of visual narrative and graphic novelist. He is Professor of Art and Design and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Chester, UK. Dr Grennan is author of Thinking about Comics (Bloomsbury 2026), Thinking about Drawing (Bloomsbury 2022), A Theory of Narrative Drawing (Palgrave 2017), Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval (Book Works 2018) and Dispossession (Cape, 2015, one of The Guardian Books of the Year 2015). He is co-author and editor of Island Tales (Bess 2026), Key Terms in Comics Studies (Palgrave 2022) and co-author of Marie Duval, Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (MUP 2020). Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books.
Thomas Ballhausen is a poet, philosopher, curator, assistant professor in the Department of Open Arts, and Head of the Interuniversity Organization Arts and Knowledges at the University Mozarteum Salzburg, Austria.
Elena Peytchinska is a visual artist, performance designer, researcher, and lecturer in the Department of Stage and Film Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Their latest publication Fiction Fiction (De Gruyter, 2023) addresses spatial storytelling within the framework of language-based artistic research.
Yiqi Zhang is a PhD candidate at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (UAL), and a member of the UAL Comics Research Hub. Her doctoral project, Globalised Graphic Storytellers: Reimagining Graphic Narratives from Transcultural Perspectives, develops a methodological framework for understanding graphic narratives across cultural contexts through a transcultural lens. As a bilingual practitioner-researcher working across English- and Mandarin-speaking contexts, she integrates theory and creative practice, using comics as both medium and method.
Bio to be announced.